Life inevitably faces us with grievous trials and terrible troubles. None of us remains unscathed and undamaged as we make our way through this fallen world. When trials come, they can loom up so large before us that they become the only thing we can see. And even if we find the strength to cry out to God, we cry out with our gaze fixed on the difficulty—on the disease, the loss, the temptation, the pandemic, the financial fears.
It is in this context that Oswald Chambers exhorts us to shift our gaze to something bigger, something stronger, something more permanent than our trial. “We have to pray with our eyes on God, not on the difficulties,” he says. We see this perfectly modeled in Jesus Christ, who, with the specter of the cross looming before him, said to his disciples, “‘My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.’ And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed” (Matthew 26:38-39).
In the deepest agony of spirit, with the darkest trial before him, Jesus set his eyes on the Father. Shouldn’t we do the same?
