LOOK UP AND AHEAD

DAY 272

Zechariah  2:1 I lifted up mine eyes again, and looked, and behold a man with a measuring line in his hand.

The action highlighted by Zechariah today is ‘to lift up one’s eyes’. And while these words connote a rather simple meaning, it is in our interest to consider them a bit more in depth. Those words appear hundreds of times in scripture, and whenever they do, they are followed by the receiving of new information through the sense of sight: “Eyes are lifted, then men see”

In Judges 8:28, we read about the effect of a nation that could not lift up their heads: ‘Thus was Midian subdued before the children of Israel, so that they lifted up their heads no more. And the country was in quietness forty years in the days of Gideon.’ An entire nation was still because heads were bowed down.

This denotes more than just the physical action of keeping the head down, but also every authority and power it commands. In other words, “a person who cannot lift up his eyes, is indeed in trouble“. For if your eyes are looking downwards, how can you face the battles approaching? Only after you bump into them? How can you enter seasons if your eyes face the ground and you can’t see doors?

The Psalmist described God as ‘the lifter up of his head’, but he also gives us crucial information about lifting up eyes when he wrote “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help “(121:1). He himself had to lift up his eyes. There are times when we have to find courage from the word of God to speak to ourselves ‘why art thou cast down oh my soul, look up, lift up your eyes to behold what God is doing.”

If today you are looking downward, now is the time to begin looking ahead and up.

You cannot run forward, looking downwards. You will stumble and fall.

#sly