Look Up
“And when He had taken the five loaves and the two fish, He looked up to heaven, blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to His disciples to set before them; and the two fish He divided among them all.” Mark 6:41 NKJ
Recently I was thinking about how easy it becomes for us to lose our vision. This is important when you realize that you will always go in the direction you are looking. So, the question that should always be on our minds is, “Where am I looking”? There are so many distractions in life that usually cause us to lose sight of Godly things before we even realize it. By then, we are already off the path the Lord intends for us and feeling the frustration of not being in line with the will of God.
There is no better example for us than from Jesus as He was preparing to feed the multitudes in Mark 6. He was facing the very same natural realm realities that we deal with in life. He faced a seemingly impossible situation. We can read above how He dealt with the impossible and use it as an example for whatever we may face.
Even Jesus had to be certain to take his eyes off of the carnal things in this world, the distractions of the natural realm. Once He did that, he could focus on spiritual truths and overcome the natural realm by placing His vision on heaven. He had to look up and away from the natural.
Today, determine that your vision will not be focused on the things of this world. That does not mean you ignore the things of the natural realm, what it does mean is that those things of the world do not become your final reality. Your ultimate reality and final truth is the Word of God and its promises for you. So lift you eyes off the things that are a burden to you today. Take your eyes (both physically and spiritually) off the problems before you, and lift them to heaven. Look up, for that is where your strength comes from. If Jesus needed to look up to remove the world from His sight so that He could do amazing things, how much more true is that for us?
One final thought. When the Israelites were in the dessert they faced serpents that were attacking and killing them. God told Moses to make a serpent image and put it on a pole high up so that all Israel could see it. If anyone was bitten by a snake all they had to do was look up at the pole and they were delivered. So Moses made a bronze serpent, and put it on a pole; and so it was, if a serpent had bitten anyone, when he looked at the bronze serpent, he lived. (Numbers 21:9)
The serpent on the pole represented all the sins of the people. Those sins were put up on a tree high for all to see, and then when they looked at them they would be delivered. In the same way, Jesus was hung on a cross with our sins, so that we could look up to Him and be delivered. That is why the Bible says that anyone hung on a tree is cursed. The curse that we carried was carried to the cross by Jesus so that we, just like the Israelites in the desert might be delivered from the curse. Look up today and see the deliverance of the Lord in your life and in your circumstances.
J Todd Hostetler