Focus: Looking to Jesus When Life Gets Confused
Focus
LOOKING TO JESUS
WHEN LIFE GETS CONFUSED
It’s a painting of a table. But at first glance you’d never guess.
The legs don’t seem to attach where they should. The side looks like the front. The corners almost look inside out. The top looks upside down. It’s only after you focus on the painting that you begin to understand.
Picasso wanted the viewer to see … the impossible.
The painting portrays the table from several points of view. Shifting your focus, you observe the entire table at once—side underneath, top, and bottom. What first looks like little more than some abstract mishmash begins to take shape. The parts of the table relate. Everything fits together. You’re viewing a simple table—as you’ve never seen it before.
Extraordinary things can happen with a change of focus. When we think of focus, we usually think of limiting or narrowing our vision. But focus can also mean expanding our vision to better understand the entire picture. And when you broaden your vision beyond the obvious, the expected, you’re always in for a big surprise.
That’s precisely the way we need to focus on the Lord Jesus.
Our ideas about Him are all so neat and tidy and symmetrical. So very right-side-up. Then along comes the Lord and flips our preconceived notions upside-down. In so doing, we begin to see our Master and Savior as we’ve never seen Him before. We discover that the Lord loves to keep us in perpetual wonder. Focusing on Him that way helps us see … the impossible.
I think about that every time I read the story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24.
They had formed definite ideas about this Messiah around whom they had rearranged their whole life and religious faith. They had always seen Him from one perspective—that of the political savior who would deliver them from the Roman oppressors. Their vision was so narrow and limited that after the Lord’s death, nothing made sense. The week’s events seemed abstract and confusing—like one of Picasso’s wildest paintings. Nothing fit. Nothing related. What else could they do but go home and try to pick up where they had left off before Jesus had come on the scene?
Little did they realize, but a Glorious Intruder was about to enlarge their focus—and give them the surprise of their lives.
As the two disciples walked along the road, lamenting the events surrounding the crucifixion, a Stranger appeared. The Lord Jesus Himself intruded on their conversation, asking them what they were discussing. The disciples, their eyes blinded, may have been annoyed with this uninvited guest. Who was this forward person breaking into their intimate conversation?
But as they traveled, this Man began to broaden their vision. He helped them see things from a different angle as He unfolded the scriptures and explained how suffering and crucifixion were part of the complete picture.
Their hearts strangely warmed, the two disciples then focused for the first time on this Intruder … their risen Lord.
Aaah, so THAT’S what the Scriptures meant. Why, I never saw it that way!
The disciples were beginning to understand things that seemed impossible just moments earlier—all because they looked at Jesus as they had never before looked at Him. And their lives were forever changed.
Wouldn’t you like to see a more complete picture of Jesus? One of the most wonderful things about knowing God is that there’s always so much more to know, so much more to discover. Just when we least expect it, He intrudes into our neat and tidy notions about who He is and how He works. He delights to turn a situation upside down and show us how the impossible can suddenly become logical.
The Reverend Gregory Hotchkiss writes:
The Lord does not come to put His stamp of approval upon our views and conclusions about life and about Him and His mission. Rather, He comes and gently, but ever so firmly, intrudes with His Word, and He says, “Listen, it is not as you had thought.”
I pray that the next few pages will reveal a perspective of Jesus you have never seen.