Keep Your Eyes Always on the Lord: An Essay
/“I keep my eyes always on the Lord. With Him at my right hand, I will not be shaken. ”
The other day I was playing with a young family member. She had her hands full of toys and was running around having a great time. All of a sudden she lost her balance and fell, and it was a pretty hard fall. The toys in her hands went all over the place, and one of her shoes managed to come flying off (as could only happen to a little kid). She was laying on her back and looked at me with that look of uncertainty - deciding if she should cry or not. She was looking to see my reaction to help her decide. Knowing that I shouldn’t have a big reaction, I just looked down at her and smiled, to which she smiled back and yelled “Whoopsie!”. I walked over to her, picked her up, helped her put her shoe back on, and she went back to running around and having fun.
The path of Christianity is a difficult one. As spiritual children the question isn’t “are we going to fall?”; rather the question is “how often and how hard are we going to fall?”. Sometimes we will just stumble or trip, but other times we will fall so hard that one of our shoes comes off.
When we fall and we’re deciding how to react, it is important that we know who to look at. If we look at the society around us they may encourage the fall, tell us that the fall was a good thing, and we should try to do it again. If we look to the evil one, he may try to tell us that we’re defined by the fall and that we’ll never become better. Or if you’re like me, you’ll turn around and look at yourself. You’ll get upset with yourself for falling and want to mope around in your brokenness. And then you’ll want to pick yourself back up and tell yourself if you just work harder at it you won’t fall anymore (which for me will last a couple hours on a good day).
This is why it is important that when we fall, we must keep our eyes on the Lord. As Jesus tells us, we should become like little children (Mt 18:4). Saint Therese beautifully explains “To remain a child before God means to recognize our nothingness, to expect everything from God. It is not to be discouraged over our fallings, for children fall often, but they are too little to hurt themselves much.”
It is our natural instinct to remain self-reliant when we fall, we will often tell ourselves we just need to work harder and that will prevent future falls. Although our own personal efforts are important, the real improvements happen when we rely on the grace of God. Saint Therese says “It is impossible for me to grow up, and so I must bear with myself such as I am, with all my imperfections. But I want to seek out a means of going to heaven by a little way, a way that is very straight, very short and totally new … The elevator which must raise me up to heaven is your arms, O Jesus! And for this, I had no need to grow up, but rather I had to remain little and become this more and more”.
The smaller we become, the more we come to rely on the grace of God and the more we grow in holiness! How simple of a solution!
There is no better example of this than Saint Peter. Jesus invited Peter to walk out onto the roaring waters, and he was miraculously able to stay afloat (Mt 14:27-29). How perfect is this imagery for us walking through the craziness of our modern world. But, as soon as he took his eyes off the Lord he became frightened and started to sink. While he was helplessly sinking, he once again looked back to the Lord and ‘cried out “Lord, save me!”, and immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him” (Matthew 14:30-31). How different this story would be; if while he was sinking, rather than looking to the Lord, Peter had tried to help himself!
No matter how badly we’re sinking, or how hard we’ve fallen we just need to keep our eyes focused on the Lord. If we follow the example of Saint Peter and cry out “Lord, save me!”, He will be there to pick you up, help you put your shoes back on, and get you back on the path to holiness.
Saint Peter, pray for us!
Saint Therese, pray for us!
-This essay was written by a parishioner who requested to remain anonymous.
“Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His love endures forever.”
