what dims the light that is supposed to brighten our hearts?

right now, we’re in the midst of a series of posts on Paul’s prayer from Ephesians 1. He prays that the eyes of our hearts would be enlightened. This opens our eyes to an interesting concept: our hearts have eyes! These heart-eyes are supposed to be used to look at some very particular things. But, they need enlightenment. Why? Because they get darkened. How?

In the previous post of this series i discussed one source of darkness: looking on worthless things. Jesus says that the eye is the lamp of the body, filling our being with either light or darkness, depending what we look on (Matthew 6:22). Consider this: if our hearts have eyes, then we can “look” at things that have no physical form. We can “look” at things without using our natural eyes.

There are other dark things our hearts can dwell on that will fill us with darkness.

For example: despair. depression. hatred. condemnation. jealousy. doubt. fear. add your own dark spots to the list.

We’ve had some really enriching discussion in the comments on these posts. One of the things that another hill-dweller brought up was that apart from Christ, our hearts are dark: period. They will bring forth darkness on their own. Any external dark-stimuli only serves to feed the growth of darkness within us.

We can ask Holy Spirit to expose the areas of darkness in our hearts: show us where we are dwelling on the dark instead of the light of Christ. It could be that hopeless family situation. It could be the way those people mistreated you. It could be frustration over unfulfilled passions and dreams. It could be shame over that deed done, or loneliness, that impossible situation or that one pet habit. Whatever it is, let it be exposed by the light. Let’s admit to God whatever darkness we’ve been looking on with our hearts or eyes. Let’s let the light of His love forgive us and chase away the darkness. Let’s set our eyes on the bright and beautiful things that are above where Christ is. He wants to wow the eyes of our hearts with some of the most thrilling things in all of heaven and earth…