Look Upward

Instead of focusing on what I am not able to do, focus on what Christ is able to do in my life.  To look upward, not inward.  Focusing inward and on my personal weaknesses can often lead to discouragement.  But Christ wants us to turn to Him in our weakness, that He may change us and make weak things become strong.  

 

Awhile back, my sister and I brought our children to a nearby university and visited their art museum.  There was a painting by Norman Rockwell displayed titled, “Lift Up Thine Eyes”. When I saw it, I was immediately struck by the message it communicated.  It depicts city dwellers passing by a beautiful cathedral, doves flying overhead, and a message written by the priest to “lift up thine eyes.” Each person is looking down, appearing burdened and sad, oblivious to the beauty they are passing by.

The message Norman Rockwell portrays is about religious apathy in America. It depicts the many individuals and populations that don’t acknowledge God and His ability to lift burdens and guide our lives.  While contemplating this message I thought of how often I think “I can do this on my own” or even “I need to do this on my own”, without His help, and continue to look down while passing by beautiful blessings the Lord is prepared to give me, if I but ask.

I have received some counsel that has proven to be so valuable.  Instead of focusing on what I am not able to do, focus on what Christ is able to do in my life.  To look upward, not inward.  Focusing inward and on my personal weaknesses can often lead to discouragement.  But Christ wants us to turn to Him in our weakness, that He may change us and make weak things become strong.  Just like Paul, when referring to the thorn in His flesh, he expressed, “for when I am weak, then am I strong” (2 Cor. 12:10).

Recognizing our weakness is necessary for growth. By bringing those weaknesses daily to Christ and asking for His grace to strengthen and magnify us, His light is able to shine through us and eventually help our weaknesses to become strengths.

I sometimes think of an analogy of my weaknesses being like a piece of paper with holes in it.  Christ is perfect, and therefore has no holes in His paper. When I pair myself with Him, it’s like placing Christ’s paper behind my own.  My holes are filled in, and ultimately, the more holes I have that I rely on Him to fill in, the more Christ is able to shine through me. When I think about my weaknesses in this way, it gives me hope and even gratitude for the ways in which I need His help each day.  I want to yoke myself to Christ and rely on His grace. I want to gain a relationship with Him that is forged through a constant reliance on Him.

This example also reminds me of the story of the woman with an issue of blood told in the New Testament.  She had faith that if she could but touch the hem of Christ’s garment, she could be made completely whole. She reached forth as the multitude passed by “and virtue had gone out of him” (Mark 5:30).  The reference to virtue here means power.  She reached out, and she was healed through Christ’s power.  When we have faith and reach out to Christ, we will experience His merciful healing touch, again and again.  His power is able to make us completely whole, with greater strength and purity than we had before. When we allow Him to heal and change us, we are also allowing Him to help us become more like Him.

From recent life circumstances, I have felt more than ever before the need for Christ’s power to flow through me and give me the strength I need to function each day.  I have had this thought run through my mind many times, “When you reach up for the Lord’s power in your life with the same intensity that a drowning person has when grasping and gasping for air, power from Jesus Christ will be yours. When the Savior knows you truly want to reach up to Him—when He can feel that the greatest desire of your heart is to draw His power into your life—you will be led by the Holy Ghost to know exactly what you should do” (President Russell M. Nelson, “Drawing The Power of Jesus Christ into Our Lives”).

I have felt the need to keep that intense focus on Christ very literally as I feel the wind and the waves of life crash around me.  I am learning what that looks and feels like. It includes praying for deliverance from negative thoughts, not looking around me and comparing myself to others, trusting that the Lord has a plan for our family although it’s hard to tell exactly what it is, and sincere, “pour out my soul” prayer.

I don’t think I’m the only one that identifies with Peter when he was so quick to hop out of that ship and go towards Christ walking upon the sea. “But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me” (Matthew 14:30).  It is so easy to get distracted by the things around us, lose our focus on Christ, and begin to sink.  But that is why I am grateful that it’s not over until it’s over. We have the choice each day to change, to repent, to pray for Christ’s grace, and to experience His healing, loving embrace.  The Savior did for Peter as He does for you and me, “And immediately Jesus stretched for his hand and caught him” (v.31).

As Elder Jeffrey R. Holland stated, “It is not without a recognition of life’s tempests but fully and directly because of them that I testify of God’s love and the Savior’s power to calm the storm. Always remember in that biblical story that He was out there on the water also, that He faced the worst of it right along with the newest and youngest and most fearful. Only one who has fought against those ominous waves is justified in telling us—as well as the sea—to “be still.”8 …Christ knows better than all others that the trials of life can be very deep and we are not shallow people if we struggle with them…

“Because Christ’s eyes were unfailingly fixed on the future, He could endure all that was required of Him” (An High Priest of Good Things to Come).  

Christ was “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.”  Let us not “[hide]… our faces from him” (Isaiah 53:3), but instead follow the Savior’s examples and look up, having our eyes “unfailingly fixed” on Him in our joys, sorrows, griefs, and weakness to experience His healing, strengthening power.  

 

How you can look upward instead of inward?

 

 

Image: Austin Neill on unsplash