Heading Home

“Keep me as the apple of Your eye.”
Psalm 17:8a NKJV
David, in praying to the Lord, asked to be kept as the apple of His eye. What do those words mean?

According to the Hebrew definition, keep means to hedge about as with thorns, guard, to protect, attend to, observe, or give heed.

Apple means the little man of the eye, or the tiny reflection of one’s self in someone else’s eyes. As they watch you, focusing their attention on you.

Actually, apple is two words. The second word means a daughter, used in the same sense of relationship, as a personification, also descendants, towns, and villages.

David was asking God to guard and protect him as that tiny personification or reflection in His eyes by keeping His focus on David.

When I go to a wedding, I love to focus on the groom’s face. Just to see the expression on his face change from one of nervous disaster to one of pure delight as he watches his beautiful bride glide down the aisle. A glint appears in his eyes. He never takes them off his beloved. And if you were to look very closely into his eyes, you would see that the glint is her reflection.

If you could look closely into the eyes of your Beloved Lord, you would see that glint of yourself, your reflection. Because He focuses on you. His object of great devotion. Guarding you. Protecting you, as with a crown of thorns.

David wrote, “Behold, the Lord’s eye is upon those who fear Him [who revere and worship Him with awe], who wait for Him and hope in His mercy and loving-kindness.” (Ps. 33:18 Amp)

And He desires that He be that glint, that reflection, in our eyes. The author of Hebrews tells us that “We must keep our eyes on Jesus.” (Contemporary English Version) The NIV says we need to be “fixing our eyes on Jesus.” While the Amplified says, “Looking away [from all that will distract] to Jesus.”

Vine’s says looking means “to look away from one thing so as to see another,” to consider attentively.

It means to fix your gaze on your Beloved.

When you were a kid, or even as an adult, did you stare at an object for one minute and then look away? What did you see?

Your eyes projected the focused image onto the second object as a reflection.

That’s what God the Father wants us to do with Jesus, to look so intently at Him that everything else that comes into view has the reflection of Jesus on it. Therefore, as Paul told the Corinthians, “We don’t focus on the things that can be seen but on the things that can’t be seen. The things that can be seen don’t last, but the things that can’t be seen are eternal.” (2 Cor. 4:18 Common English Bible)

We focus on Jesus, the Unseen. A single eye focus. As Jesus said, “The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.” (Matt. 6:22 KJV)

So, what interferes with your focus? What parades before your eyes, giving you double vision and darkening your view? What distracts you from having that divine Little Man reflection in your eyes? Keeping your eyes focused to maintain that holy reflection is essential.

How do we do that?

* Make time to pray
* Study God’s Word
* Put the Word into practice by obedience
* Live in love with others
* Practice peace and patience
* Have a positive outlook and attitude
* Don’t let your eyes view things that you know will throw a blanket of darkness over the light of the Lord.

So, what do others see reflected in your eyes?



~~This post is part of the One Word Blog Carnival on the topic Reflection. Hop on over to Peter Pollock's site to see the other submissions.~~

What blurs our vision…

When the venom of hate is slung at us…
When a myriad of voices clamor for our attention…
When self is elevated above the concern for others…
When doubt and worry replace our trust in the Lord…
When heartaches pile up against the door of our hearts…
When daily circumstances whir around us and cause confusion…
When activities and chores on our schedules become overwhelming…
When the pain of gossip behind our backs comes from a so-called friend...
When greed for a bulging bank account pushes its way to be #1 on our list…
When our spouse breaks his/her commitment to a monogamous relationship…
When we pay more attention to how we feel rather than on the truths of God’s Word…
When accumulating possessions to keep up with everyone else becomes our main goal…

…what do we do? We usually go into a tailspin and lose our focus.

When God seems not to be in a hurry to remedy any of the above trials for which we have prayed until we are exhausted, instead of praying as our first priority that God will be glorified in it, we boo-hoo His tardiness for not taking us out of the problem, or we question His faithfulness. We lose our focus.

If we focus more on the stress and limitation of our situations rather than on the peace, power, and comfort of God to rectify them, we will certainly lose our focus and we will give up.

I have no magic bullet list of how to stay focused. All I can tell you is that, in my experience, it is in those times we tell the Lord we trust Him for the outcome and continue to thank Him in the meantime.

Isaiah gives us the solution, “You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in You, all whose thoughts are fixed on You!” (Is. 26:3 NLT)

It takes practice, practice, practice to keep our thoughts focused. In regard to those stray and harried thoughts, Paul tells us what to “refute arguments and theories and reasonings and every proud and lofty thing that sets itself up against the [true] knowledge of God; and we lead every thought and purpose away captive into the obedience of Christ.” (2 Cor. 10:5 Amp)

Solomon warns us in Proverbs 4:23, “Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.” (Masoretic Text) Another version says, “Be careful what you think, because your thoughts run your life.” (NCV)

What siphons your focus away from the Lord?

May you recognize those things and practice, practice, practice to keep your focus on the Lord.