Editorial: The Cover
The cover of this volume pictured the words, “Depth of Focus,” with a face behind it.
Depth of focus is almost a subhuman eye pulls into sharp image conscious thing. The healthy that upon which it looks.
However, focus is also an act of the will. For instance, the eye looks through a glass window to the scene outside, or by an act of the will, pulls back the focus and looks at the glass itself.
Read again the words on the cover, “Depth of Focus”. Now look “through” the words to the “man beyond.”
This ability to penetrate beyond gift. A gift that must be often exercised the surface of things is a grand if it is to be developed.
How often do we hear (perhaps from our own lips) sharp criticism of the actions or attitudes of a fellow believer or an assembly, without the slightest effort to penetrate the externals and see beyond.
How often is a believer or assembly categorized according to certain externals instead of the Christ likeness of character.
We measure the methods instead of the man, the movements instead of the motives. We shake his hand and fail to reach his heart, point the finger at what we think he does and fail to see what he is.
Far too often our focus is out, away out. Instead of getting on our knees and thanking God for the measure of Christ and His grace in the man or assembly, we climb on our high horse, peer with narrow vision and shallow focus through our tinted lenses and say (under our breath, of course) “I am not as this man.”
No doubt we are right in what we say, but like the proud utterer of those words in the temple, perhaps, if we only realized it, it would be better if we were more like the one we disdain.
There’s an old saying that “hindsight is better than foresight”. We could add “… but insight is the best sight”.
Insight as to what we really are in ourselves, is an insight as to true values in the light of the Judgment Seat of Christ, an insight that, though seeing the external, focusses, not upon it, but upon the pure gold within.
Hast thou dove’s eyes
To see both sharp and clear;
And soaring high o’er mists that rise
Extend thy view beyond the near
And close at hand?
Or is thy view so close
That vision doubles?
Occupied not with the rose,
But with the thorny troubles
That pierce and tear.
Man looketh on the outward show,
But God, the true:
And should I long His will to know
Externals won’t distract the view
From that within.
“Lord, that I may receive Thy sight”
Should be my prayer.
Not just to see, but see aright,
Discerning, not what seemeth there,
But what is real.
J.B.N.