Keep Your Eye On The Christ

A farmer once gave me some great advice. He told me that in order to plow in a straight line, you had to pick a point on the horizon and drive straight for it. If you looked around or looked back, you were bound to plow a crooked line. Well, I didn’t have the opportunity to check out his advice for many years, but sure enough, I discovered in mowing my pasture with a tractor that if I wanted to drive in a straight line I had to pick a spot and stick with it.

Of course, I couldn’t resist looking behind me to see how I was doing and the minute I took my eyes off of the post I was driving towards, I started going off course. It was actually difficult to keep my eyes trained on one spot. I kept wanting to look around. There was no faking my way, however, because you could see exactly where I had been. I left a record of my wanderings, so to speak.

Life has many similarities. If we want to reach a goal, we have to keep our attention focused on where we are going. If we spend too much time looking back, we get off track. If too many other things distract us, we wobble down the road and we leave a record of where we have been.

Being focused in the Christian walk is being committed to walking with Christ. It is deciding that spending time with God is the most important thing you want to do with your life. It is not about creating a list of things that are acceptable to do and things that are not. When you invite the Spirit into your heart you will find that the Spirit leads your choices.

We live in an abundant universe. There are wonderful blessings available to us through God’s grace. They are available to everyone. God does not shut people out from receiving the good gifts that have been created for us. We shut ourselves out by losing focus of the goodness in the world. When we focus on what is wrong with ourselves, what is wrong with others, and what is wrong with our world, we are unable to head towards the beautiful things that we would like to see happen in our lives and in the world. If we want to drive in a straight line, we have to focus on our end goal.

To focus on the love of God and what was accomplished through the life of Christ gives us a goal that is beautiful and worthwhile. When we keep our eyes focused on this, there is no distraction by focusing on the faults of others. There is no place for trying to control the actions, attitudes, and beliefs of others. We can see each person as headed towards the same goal instead of competing with one another.

So what is the end goal of the Christian walk? I believe it is to restore the oneness that we all shared with God and with one another. On our fallen planet we live in quarantine from the rest of the universe. We live in separateness from one another. We live separately from God. Christ built a bridge back to God and it ultimately builds a bridge that connects each one of us with each other.

Imagine a world where everyone treats everyone else with love and respect. Imagine a world where God is viewed as a God of love. Imagine a world where all of the animals are our friends and where we are in perfect harmony with All That Is. That’s my goal. That’s my focus. That’s the place I am driving towards.

It’s a matter of keeping my eyes on the Christ and inviting the Spirit to live within me. I invite you to focus on the God of love. We can head towards a beautiful future together