“The eye is the lamp of the body,” Jesus says. Not a proposal for a new theory of sight, nor a prescientific misstep in optics. It is a summons—to recognize that light, or its absence, begins within.
Beneath our thinking and doing lies a still point—a center from which we see. It is the place of
orientation, attention, desire. The inner flame. And like a flame, it must be tended. Our vision is
never merely visual; it is shaped by the whole self—by fatigue or expectation, bitterness or mercy, fear or faith. The light we cast upon the world is first the light we carry within.
That light can fade without our noticing. A grievance goes unchecked. A habit of distraction
grows. We drift through our days, present in body but distant in spirit. The lamp does not go
out—but it flickers. And the body grows dim.
Jesus does not scold. He states a spiritual fact: when the eye is whole—when our inner life is
undivided and alert to grace—the whole person is filled with light. Not a light we generate, but a light that flows through us, unhindered.
And if the eye is a lamp, then we are not passive spectators. We are radiant beings. Our presence illumines—or obscures—the places we inhabit: kitchens, classrooms, church foyers, sidewalks.
“See to it,” Jesus says, “that the light in you is not darkness.” Not a demand for brilliance, but
a quiet call to vigilance. Guard the flame. Tend it through prayer, through self-forgetfulness,
through daily trust.
For from that interior fire we see the world—or else we do not see it at all.
Maranatha, Jordy
