Devotionals

Eyes to See

by Cynthia Bowen
09/01/19
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As often as life allows. my sister and I go to visit our father in Kentucky. We travel over a narrow road that winds its way to the top of a mountain and back down the other side. Though it is familiar to us, the views are amazing,and range from the rock face where progress has chipped away the stone, to a wide open vista of sky and valley below, and finally back to a grassy bottom on the far side with a small creek at its edge.

When we pass that green field, we often reminisce about a time long gone when the field was rented by our dad and planted with corn. After it was planted, the plowed ground would give way and the seed would shoot up until corn stalks were like soldiers standing at attention in straight rows. It was work to hoe the corn, but sometimes it was a game of racing along the furrows. When the time was right and the harvest ready, we would help (in my case, I use the word lightly) pluck the ripe ears off the stalks where it was loaded into a pickup truck to be stored for the winter.

Today, there are no crops growing in that field. It is just a green plot of ground beside the road and many people drive past it every day as they go to work, to the store, to home. I wonder sometimes, do they SEE what my sister and I see when we drive past it?

Do they see a place where a farmer wiped sweat off his brow and kept on plowing? Do they envision corn stalk soldiers growing tall in the summer sun? Do they imagine little girls slipping down the rows playing a quick game of hide and seek? Do they see the potential of that field to produce a harvest that would feed livestock in the cold months of winter? Or is it just an overgrown patch of ground that goes unnoticed as they hurry over the mountain and back?

I want to be real with you. Sometimes I get in the rut of my daily routine where I am on task and I travel through my community on auto-pilot. My eyes are on the road ,my focus is set on my destination--and I fail to really see who and what I am driving past! I fail to see the single mother who is struggling to raise her children alone. I don’t comprehend that the young man with unkempt hair has a wound in his soul that is too big for him to hide. I don’t realize that the old man on the park bench has dreams of a brighter day. I am just too busy and if Jesus were to ride down the road with me, He would be crying out in anguish, DON’T YOU SEE THE HARVEST?

I want to offer you a challenge. Go sit in your car and before you turn the key, ask Jesus to ride with you down your road, through the community in which you live, and into the city. Ask Him to tell you what He sees as you drive along. Ask Him what He feels when He looks at the people you pass, what He dreams of doing in the place He has planted you, what He envisions the Kingdom coming looks like where you are. Be intentional. Ask Him to show you the potential in this place. Ask for eyes to see the harvest.

John 4:35 Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest.