Whenever I can, I love to look out at the beautiful blue green Caribbean Sea. It calms me and I find solace as I hear gentle waves lap along the seashore while I look out at the usually tranquil seascape. When I view the serene sight of the expansive sea, I see the vastness of God. But this past weekend, I realized God was doing a new thing in me. He was shifting my gaze and instead of looking out at the sea, which is nowhere around me right now, He wanted me to look up at the limitless sky that has no boundaries unlike the sea. The sky made me think even more profoundly of Him, my Creator, the Maker of heaven and earth, who is infinite and immutable. Lifting up our eyes makes us see what we never saw before, and it helps us to get a better perspective of God’s vision for our lives.
Isaac went out to meditate in the field toward evening; and he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, camels were coming. Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac she dismounted from the camel. Genesis 24:63-64
Like Isaac and Rebekah we need to raise our eyes and look to see what God has prepared for us. If we are focused on the things around us and what people are doing, we may get distracted or maybe even depressed, and we may not recognize that we need to look up. Sometimes it may not be in our nature to look up, but when we do, we may find what we have been praying for.
I remember some years ago, I was asking God for fruit because sometimes fruits were just too expensive for me to buy. I believe it may have been the next day, I was walking at the side of the house, and I did something I normally wouldn’t do at that spot – I looked up. And then I saw one of the biggest otaheite apples I had ever seen. For those who don’t know, this is the type of apple in Jamaica that is shaped like a pear. I reached up and picked it from the tree right above my head. This again was unusual because the neighbor’s apple tree would normally be out of my reach and often the limbs would be cut so the branches would not hang over the yard where I lived. God had provided for my request in an amazing way and all I had to do was change my perspective and look up.
At times, we also have to be in the right position to see the answer to our prayers. And sometimes we have to keep on going back to see if our prayer is being answered. Elijah had told King Ahab that there was the sound of the roar of a heavy rain, but there wasn’t a cloud in sight. He went up to the top of Mount Caramel and but his face between his knees in the position of prayer. Then he sent his servant to go see if his prayer was being answered.
He said to his servant, “Go up now, look toward the sea.” So he went up and looked and said, “There is nothing.” And he said, “Go back” seven times. It came about at the seventh time, that he said, “Behold, a cloud as small as a man’s hand is coming up from the sea.” And he said, “Go up, say to Ahab, ‘Prepare your chariot and go down, so that the heavy shower does not stop you.’” 1 King 18:43-44
Elijah’s servant didn’t see anything at first, so Elijah kept on sending him back. He had to go up seven times before he could see a cloud as small as a man’s hand coming up from the sea. Sometimes we don’t see what we are looking for at first, but we shouldn’t give up, we have to keep on going up to take a look or in my case I had to look up to see what God had for me. Even, Jesus Himself looked up toward heaven and blessed the food which then multiplied for the multitude. Isaac raised his eyes also and when he did this, he saw camels in the distance and on one of those camels was his helpmate. We may have to lift our eyes up to see where our help comes from.
I will lift up my eyes to the mountains; From where shall my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. Psalms 121:1-2
We can’t keep on looking at the valley, we have to shift our focus to the mountaintop. In his “Mountaintop” speech in 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. recounted the struggles of the fight for equality for blacks at that time in the United States. An excerpt from his speech is below.
And we just went on before the dogs and we would look at them; and we'd go on before the water hoses and we would look at it, and we'd just go on singing "Over my head I see freedom in the air."
They looked at dogs and the water hoses and they knew they were in danger, but inside them they were looking up and seeing freedom, so they kept on moving. MLK had the vision of a future where his children would one day live in a nation where they would not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. Therefore, he implored his fellow black people not to wallow in the valley of despair because he had a dream despite the difficulties they were facing. His vision of a better future kept him looking up and he was seeing freedom. And so, they adapted the song “Over My Head” to declare what they were seeing even though it defied the reality that they were looking at. This is the last line of the hymn:
Over my head I see glory in the air. Over my head I see glory in the air. Over my head I see glory in the air; There must be a God somewhere!
There is a God somewhere. Do you see Him? What are you looking at? If you are not sure what to look at and where to look, then Isaiah tells us.
Lift up your eyes on high and see who has created these stars, the One who leads forth their host by number, He calls them all by name; Because of the greatness of His might and the strength of His power, not one of them is missing. Isaiah 40:26
And over the weekend, I looked up and I saw the stars clearly. I never saw Orion’s Belt before, but there it was with Sirius close by. Not far off were the planets Venus and Mars. I had never bothered to look up at night before because I figured the lights from the city would inhibit me from seeing the stars. But the stars were there all along with the planets shining brightly for me to the see. It is said that is better to view stars in the southern hemisphere and it seems to be true. They are also in the opposite direction of the northern skies. I had never seen stars like those before and all I had to do was look up. If I didn’t, I could have missed the experience that the Creator of heaven and earth was offering me. The Lord was showing me His grandeur on display through the magnificence of His creation, and He is highly to be praised as His greatness is so vast and incomprehensible.
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