Humanly speaking, how different things look through a powerful set of binoculars!

So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.
(2 Cor. 4:18 NLT)

‘We don’t look at the troubles we can see now . . .’ Some of us may be inclined to recoil a bit when we read this verse: we are very good at looking at the troubles we can see and feel! But the real issue here that Paul is highlighting is where we fix our gaze rather than where we allow it to rest a few moments.

The Greek verb skopeō (Strongs 4648) means to ‘look at, observe, contemplate; to mark; to fix one’s eyes upon, direct one’s attention to, or to take heed to oneself.’ It challenges us to consider precisely where our attention is fixed? This applies equally when it comes to prayer, of course, because we are constantly seeking the Lord’s aid and perspective on highly imperfect temporal situations, with a view to seeing God’s eternal purposes being worked out.

May the Lord help us to look beyond what we see with our physical eyes to what is unseen, knowing that it is that which is unseen which alone is eternal. Yes, may He help us to keep our eye on the particular balls He directs us to pick up and run with: to love what He loves, and to either keep our distance or know how to pray about things that are not pleasing to Him.

Scoping out what is happening in France and America

I was tickled this morning to be reminded that the dash above the final ‘o’ in the transliteration of skopeō is called a ‘macron,’ from the Greek word makron for ‘long.’ Well, President Macron has certainly been serving long(!): he will shortly be announcing his sixth new Prime Minister. [1]

It is not hard to see the troubles France is experiencing the political system is basically jammed solid. Parliament is divided three ways (left, centre and right), and no side seemingly willing to cooperate or compromise. An English friend living there wrote to me to say that she sees signs of Soyons ingouvernable (‘Let’s be ungovernable!’) working out on every hand. Having seen her children through the French education system, she considers it to play its part in fostering this attitude by its inflexible, rote-learning teaching methods (something I also noted when I spent a term in a French school at the age of seventeen) which do little to promote learning to learn by questioning. She sees this same rigidity in many of the churches: ‘We know the way it should be done, and everyone else is wrong!’

Let’s remember to pray for our wonderful Gallic neighbours. They need our prayers. Pray for sufficient flexibility to find creative and life-giving solutions. For while they are facing significant temporal troubles, here is also, almost paradoxically, a magnificently passionate, energetic creativity about the French people that we long to see harnessed and released for Kingdom purposes.

[1] According to this BBC article, French parliamentarians are optimistic that new elections will not be needed. And a headline in Le Monde today (10-10-25) indicates that the RN (formerly the National Front) may be ready to do a deal with the extreme right following the next lot of elections in order to form a majority in the National Assembly. See Marine Le Pen et Jordan Bardella n’ont pas écarté une future alliance avec des élus extérieurs au parti d’extrême droite pour constituer une majorité absolue à l’Assemblée.

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash