Be Careful Little Eyes What You See...

“Be careful little eyes what you see, be careful little eyes what you see, for the Father up above is looking down in love, so be careful little eyes what you see.”

This familiar children’s song is often used in teachings on purity, encouraging us to filter what images we watch on tv, look at magazines, etc. We know that we will be held accountable for all of the images we see, and that those images will affect our minds, even if we just glance at them for a second. I once heard someone say "You become what you behold" implying that what we look at will shape who we are.
Yet what about images of another nature...images of children eating crayons because they are so hungry, images of fathers patching holes in mud & grass houses, images of gogos putting food in their bags to take home to share with hungry family members, images of women in tears rejoicing over a month’s worth of food, images of a mother’s tears as she prepares to die and leave her sons motherless, images of a new orphan who doesn’t grasp the full impact of what just happened as his mother died, images of people hungry for God, images of children wearing clothes that are so worn down that they are see-through, images of illiterate people hanging on every word as someone reads the Bible, images of the three wet wipes it takes to clean one child's face, images of people unable to grasp the gift of a book that they can keep forever because they have no possessions....and so many more.
Those images also affect us, but in God’s sovereignty, He allows us to see things in order to take action. We live in a culture that is so bombarded by images that we are numb to most of what we see. Yet James admonishes us that if we see a brother or sister in need and don’t respond to that need, we need to take a second look at our faith that we claim to have (James 2: 14-17).
Our lives are to be full of actions...because of all that we have seen here in our lives, but also because through God's written revelation, we have seen how it ends. We know without a doubt that Christ will come again, that every part of this earth is groaning for redemption (Romans 8), that one day every knee will bow and tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, and that those who are in Christ will be raised to spend eternity with Him.

Yet with this glimpse of how it ends, God calls us to action.

He calls us to act now according to what we know will happen in the future...working towards His Kingdom coming, working towards reconciliation, seeing things in this world for the temporary gifts they are, putting our hope in eternity instead of the fleeting circumstances of today. Just as pregnant parents would be fools to not prepare and start living in the reality of the child soon to come, we would be fools to not prepare and start living in the reality of eternity that is to come!