Sunday Morning Coffee: The Apple of Your Eye

Proverbs 7: 1-2.”My son, keep my words
    and store up my commands within you.
² Keep my commands and you will live;
    guard my teachings as the apple of your eye.”

There is an interesting history behind this term, “the apple of your eye.”  My research indicates that in the original Hebrew, the term was actually “the dark center” of the eye, or the pupil.  There is much more about how it has become the expression we use today.

The important thing is that we are to keep God’s Word safely guarded in our minds and hearts; that we are to protect it, and study it, and love it.  When we do,  we will have life. We will find the pleasure and the beauty of life that God intended us to find.

The opposite is also true.  When we  fill up our eyes with things that are contrary to His Word, and those things become the center of our desires and of far more importance than His Word, then  the life of joy in the Lord can flicker and die.

In Psalm 13, a retrospective written by David when he was older about a time when he was young, we see him in utter despair. He is running away from Saul, who wants to kill him. David cries out to God, saying things like, “How long will You forget about me?  How long will You hide your face from me?”

The truth is that God had not forgotten David; nor had He turned His face away.  David had lost sight of God, however.  God was no longer the apple of David’s eye, and when he continues in that Psalm to pray and seek God, then in the last two verses he begins to rejoice again in God’s salvation; he even finds he can once again sing unto the Lord.

When I skip my Bible-reading, or skim over it just to get it done, there is a nearly tangible reduction of joy and peace in my heart.  It doesn’t take long for me to find a moment to pray, seeking forgiveness, and get back on track.

I need God’s Word, just as I need food and water.  Without it, other things can easily become the apple of my eye.

In those things, though, there is very little joy or life.  You’d think I’d have this all figured out and never have a problem staying in the Word, right?  I’m 70, after all, and by now I should know better.

I DO know better.  I just don’t always DO what I KNOW.

Lord, help me to keep Your Word as the apple of my eye.