How do you see it?

Matthew 6:22-23

[22]"The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; [23]but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!"

Well folks, this is one you won't find in the lectionary.  It comes right after prayer, fasting and treasures in heaven and right before serving two masters.  It caught my eye today...so I thought I would explore today.

What I notice is that there is always light.  When seeing with healthy eyes the body is shining with light.  When seeing with unhealthy eyes, the body is in darkness.  Being the week of Transfiguration Sunday, this passage intrigues me.  Because Jesus is the only one who sees clearly and shines so brightly that even his clothes shine like light (Matthew 17:1-9). So the more clearly we see Jesus, the more light shines from within us.  This is the idea of the halo of light seen around the head and/or body in iconography.

So how exactly does our light shine?

For me it begins with a smile.  If I am not smiling, there is no way I can be seeing with healthy eyes.  My tennis teammates comment that I am always smiling on the court.  First of all, tennis just makes me smile.  But even when it is a bad day on the court, it's still tennis which still makes me smile!  This is a much more difficult principle to instill  when the situation is a little bit more difficult, like when the diagnosis is grim or I lose my income.  Yet this is when I can talk myself into the possibility of smiling and I give in because it is much easier to address difficult situations with a smile.

I think this is what this text points toward with the idea that the light is always present inside of us.  We can tap into this source when we can't do it on our own.  Thanks be to God for the light shining in each one of us!