Keeping things in focus

When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus (Matthew 17:8).

When Leonardo da Vinci was working on his famous painting The Lord’s Supper, he had only one goal—that the person of the Savior should attract and hold the attention of all who gazed at the painting. But in one part of the picture there was a tiny ship that he had spent three weeks painting with great care. When the finished painting was exhibited and the people came to see it, Leonardo noticed that they all crowded together to look at the one corner of the picture with the small ship that had required so much intensive labor. “Just see how grand that is! Truly, he is a master artist!” he heard them say. Chagrined by this, he waited until all the visitors were gone; then he took his brush, and with one sweeping stroke he blotted out the little ship. He said, “No one shall find reason for admiring anything except Christ alone.”

We are often like the crowds who admired Leonardo’s little ship; we treasure the Bible for the beauty of its language, we delight in the uplifting music of the worship service, or we admire the sunlight sparkling through the stained-glass windows. However, these things all point to Jesus; if we do not focus on God's Son, the Bible is just a book, the hymns are just songs, and the stained glass is just a window.

We need to be like Leonardo—the focus of our attention needs to be fixed exclusively on Christ. Christmas has meaning only because Jesus was born among us to live the perfect life that God expects of us; Lent only has purpose because Jesus suffered God’s punishment for our sins; the wonder of Easter is that Jesus defeated death and rose alive from the grave to love us forever. It is only because of the Christ of God that our sins are forgiven and we have the hope of life beyond the grave. Please join me in praying:

Holy Spirit, keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith. Help us to remember that nothing in our lives should distract us from our Savior, and move us to repentance when we focus our attention on the wrong things. In Jesus’ most precious name we pray, amen.