Luke 11:33-36
“Notice what you notice.” Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness (v. 34). I have always read this verse with a major focus only on the first eight words, “Your eye is the lamp of your body.” Essentially I had in mind, “Watch out what you are looking at.” Mostly that’s what online commentaries were saying also. What you are looking at affects the rest of who you are. Mostly it’s an external focus, our eye looking out and affecting our entire being either for good or for bad.
But today I looked at that whole verse differently. Instead of our eyes looking out, I imagined others looking in at “our soul”. What do others see when they look at us, when they look into our eyes? Re-read the second part of that verse. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light. What do other people see when they look into our eyes? Do they see a shining, radiant being or do they see a soul clouded in darkness?
This latter understanding is more consistent with the first verse, No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a basket… (v. 33). The whole purpose of lighting a lamp is to see whatever is inside the room where the lamp is located.
Metaphors always fail at some level, but the Holy Spirit today put a different light (pun intended) on Jesus’ words in this passage.
Slava Bohu!
Well, I’m intrigued by this new take on the verses. Does seem more consistent with the verse about hiding your light under a bushel which comes before the one about your eye in one of the gospels.