Bad Vision

Vision is such an important thing to have. What we “see” around us shapes how we live in our world. We spend a lot of money to correct our physical vision through surgery, glasses and contacts. But do we pay the same amount of attention to how we interpret what we see, even when we see it correctly on the outside. In Numbers chapter 13 the Israelites send 12 spies into the promised land to do reconnaissance. When the spies return 10 of them give a bad report and here is a summary of what they say about what they saw: 31 But the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we.” 32 And they gave the children of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, “The land through which we have gone as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great stature. 33 There we saw the giants (the descendants of Anak came from the giants); and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.”

Let’s focus on one aspect of bad vision. The 10 spies say, “and so we were in their sight”. But how could they have known that? They clearly didn’t interview any of the people who lived in the land to find out what the inhabitants thought of them. They made an assumption based on what they saw but that was a bad assumption. We read later in the book of Joshua that the people in the land were actually very much afraid of the Israelites and their God. Are there situations in your life when you state with certainty what someone else “sees” about you but in reality you don’t know the truth? This can be as small as saying “she will never go on a date with me, she sees nothing in me” to “he will never forgive me because of what he has seen me do”. We really can’t know what others “see” unless we ask can we? Is it not possible that God is doing something in the other person to give them a different view of us? Please don’t allow your opinion of what others “see” to shape your actions. Instead, move ahead with God at your side…go ahead…”see” what happens!