Focusing on What is Real



 “We live by faith, not by sight.” 2 Corinthians 5:7

“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”
  Hebrews 11:1-2

I am writing this column on Christmas day, even though it will come out more than a week later. We will see part of our beloved family later in the day, but right now it is nice just to sit in my rocking chair and be still and listen to Christmas music! I know someone who  decided this year not to send gifts, feeling that Christmas was getting more and more materialistic. I couldn’t agree more.

Maybe it’s just because I’m getting older, but I feel that our culture is more and more in overdrive. There is the constant hype of advertising, constant calls from machines doing telemarketing (even if you are on “do not call” lists), simpler and simpler answers to everything, politics by tweet, etc., etc.
In that environment, the following verse comes as a refreshing word from beyond this world: “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:18) All the things we can see are temporary! God, who is eternal, cannot be seen with our eyes, but only with the eyes of faith!

In the New Year, I think it would be a calming and sane thing not to focus on the blur of the temporary and superficial flux of the  world, but to focus on what is hidden deep underneath and never changes. First Corinthians 13:12-13 speaks about how much of what we focus on is illusory and that only faith, hope and love really endure. Read now the words of the apostle:

“For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain, faith hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
In the new year ahead, I encourage you focus not on temporary things but on the invisible God and on his Son Jesus Christ.

“For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.”  Romans 8:24-25

Winfield Casey Jones is a retired pastor and can be reached at wrjones2002@gmail.com. This column first appeared nteh Pearland and Friendswood Reporter News. 

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