August 31 - 2 Corinthians 4:13-5:10 - The Invisible Blizzard

The evolution of wireless communication is a fascinating story. One might even call it a revolution, since it has been barely a century from Marconi’s 1896 wireless telegraph demonstration to the widespread use of radio, television, cell phones, and Wi-Fi at the turn of the current century. More fascinating than the story is the reality of broadcast communication itself. There is a blizzard of music, words, and pictures swirling around me constantly. These media are not piped in through some tube or wire or filament of glass. They are in the air. The Mona Lisa blows by my left ear. Homer’s Iliad rushes over my feet. Coltrane’s tenor sax blasts past my chest. But none of it is seen or heard. Not until I tune the right receiver does the blizzard become visible.

Paul says a quirky thing in today’s text – “We fix our eyes on what is unseen.” Weird. Wild. An oxymoron; if it’s unseen, how can they fix their eyes on it?  I guess it’s just like wireless communication. You have to tune in with the right receiver to perceive it. Maybe it’s like this – God the Father produces the content, Jesus Christ transforms us into receivers, and the Holy Spirit tunes us in.

It seems the believers at Corinth were beginning to depend too much on their physical eyes for assessing their own condition. They saw their physical health waning with the passing years. They saw the trouble their new way if living was bringing them in the form of persecution. And with Nero on the throne, their faith could mean their death!

Paul reminds them of their spiritual ‘receiver’ status. “Use your other eyes!” he seems to implore. God has broadcast content that may be invisible to the human eye, but not to the redeemed soul. The gospel of Christ has been broadcast. His resurrection has been proclaimed and the promise of our sanctification has been revealed. A heavenly house and eternal glory have been declared and a guarantee of them has been proffered. But you can’t receive those invisible realities until you let the Spirit tune you in to the setting labeled, ‘faith.’ “Live by faith, not by sight.”

Once you’re on the right channel, honed in on the right wavelength, then you can see it – that Christ’s resurrection is the foreshadow of your own indestructible future; that while the body wastes, your inner person is renewed daily; that the ‘seen’ is temporary, but the ‘unseen’ is forever; that this life’s burdens are feathers in comparison to the weight of heaven’s glory!

Tuned in and receiving God’s content, I can turn my earthly vision to other horizons, away from sorrow, self and survival, and upward to confidence and testimony and pleasing God.

Pray: God of revelation, tune my heart to know Your ways. Remind me of the spiritual realities that sometimes get lost in the flurry of earthly challenges. Make me steadfast in the present by casting a vision of my eternal future. Help me to live by faith, pleasing You all the way to glory.