The Eyes That Are Given

"Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures." - Luke 24:45 (NIV)

You were hanging the cabinet door, and you had done the work for years, sure of your own eye. The screws went in straight and the hinges sat flush, yet the door still sat a little crooked. Then you set the small level against the frame, watched the bubble settle to one side, and saw that your eye had been wrong while the level was right. Nothing about the wood had changed. Something truer than your own judgment had shown you where that judgment was off, and the relief of it was quiet, almost ordinary.

Sometimes the help we need isn't another thing to do, but a clearer way of seeing what's already in front of us. That is what the friends of Jesus needed after the resurrection, when they couldn't make sense of all that had happened: "Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures" (Luke 24:45). They had known those words for years, yet somehow missed what they meant until He helped them see it. The words themselves had not changed. What changed was the eye reading them.

That can be harder than it sounds, because sometimes what looks clear to us turns out not to be quite right. Our own clear look at a thing can be a few degrees off, just as our eye on the cabinet door was. He's not standing over us, pointing out mistakes. He is the One who made us, gently teaching us to see more clearly. "Ears that hear and eyes that see — the LORD has made them both" (Proverbs 20:12). When He corrects what He made, it is not humiliation. It's the care of Someone still making us into what He first had in mind.

But why would He do this slowly, a step at a time, instead of simply telling us everything at once? Maybe because that's how trust grows with any friend. You spend time together, and you come to know him, and the thing worth having is "...the understanding to know me" (Jeremiah 9:24). Coming to know who He is takes a whole life, not a single morning. So as we walk with Him through ordinary days, we hear Him better and follow Him more readily, and He carries the change He begins in us to the end He intended.

So today, you might pause before you answer or decide, and ask whether the Lord is showing you something you hadn't seen at first, or something you saw while your judgment ran a few degrees off, now brought back in line. It may not feel dramatic at all. And if you are unsure, you can ask, for He "...gives generously to all without finding fault" (James 1:5). We can trust what He shows us, as quietly as that cabinet door now hanging straight. He opened the minds of His friends once, and He is opening ours now, while we work. Stay in Him. Move with Him.

Prayer

Father, thank You for opening what we could not open ourselves. Teach us to see more clearly today, to trust how slowly You change us, and to act on what You show us. Amen.