Imagined Truth

I am amazed how things are not always as they appear. Even though the servant of Elisha had great natural vision, he seemed to be lacking in spiritual vision. Elisha on the other hand had great spiritual vision and therefore he was not moved by the negative things that are often seen through natural eyes.

The army that the servant saw with his natural eyes was no doubt real and apparently he thought it had the ability to capture them. As a result of what he saw with his natural eyes…fear gripped his heart and seemed to paralyze him from any hope of escaping. Consequently, he was already captured because he surrendered in his heart to the enemy, without even putting up a fight.

As a result of Elisha’s spiritual vision he saw this whole thing differently. Therefore he prayed a simple prayer for his servant...that his eyes would be opened, “Lord open his eyes that he may see.” Once the servant’s spiritual eyes were opened, he saw clearly that the spiritual army of God surrounding them was greater than the natural army he feared.

The question is…are things always as they appear to be? I do not think so.

I was once invited by a friend to go frog gigging one night in East Texas. His land had an old marshy pond on it that was filled with large frogs. I was unfamiliar with this large marshy pond, but I was excited to go on this little adventure. Plus I enjoyed eating frog legs.

As soon as we arrived on his farm that night we grabbed our frog gigging poles, adjusted our head lights on our heads, got in the boat and off we went around the pond. We were having the time of our lives spotting frogs with our head lights and gigging them.

A frog gig is a long pole with a clamping device on one end so one could reach out and clamp the frog and bring him back into the boat. When a frog has the light in his eyes he cannot see you, so he is easily gigged. One could tell how big the frog was by how far apart his eyes were. The eyes of the frogs we were after were about two inches apart.

After about an hour of frog gigging, we rounded a corner of the marsh and I spotlighted a pair of eyes that were about ten inches apart. I thought, My goodness. What in the world is that? Is it a monster from the black lagoon, is it Bigfoot, is it the frog god that has come to avenge this boat load of innocent frogs or maybe it is the Loch Ness Monster right here in East Texas.

As we slowly eased up a little closer, we saw that our monster was only a horse standing in the middle of the pond.

The point is...things are not always as they appear to be. In both cases; that of my friend and me, as well as that of the servant of Elisha—what we thought we saw was incomplete and therefore our brains registered “imagined truth” rather than “real truth.”

Father,

Help us to always see through faith-filled eyes with pure sight like Elisha did. Help us Lord to mature from always seeing through the natural eyes like the servant did. We don’t want a mixture of partial truth and imagination.

Amen