Night Vision

Dear Friends,

Several years ago I owned a small boat that I took out on the Chesapeake Bay for fishing. The best fishing is done at night, and people who do not understand the mechanics of night fishing have asked me how I could see in the dark in order to steer my boat. The answer is night vision, which we all have, though very few of us know that we have it or how we should use it. Our problem is that we have grown too accustomed to and dependant upon artificial light. Most people believe that when the man-made lights go out, darkness falls in which no one can see. As with what most people believe about most things, this belief is false. Some wonderful spiritual lessons can be gained by our understanding, if not actually using, this phenomenon of night vision.

The common belief seems to be confirmed by experience that when artificial lights go out impenetrable darkness falls. When we experience a power outage all around us seems so dark. Yet, with the passage of time, we begin to perceive things, faintly at first, but with growing resolution. This is how night vision works, namely, our eyes gradually adjust to the dark. In fact, it takes about 30 minutes for our eyes to adjust to the full power of night vision. Even a brief glimpse of light sets us back to where it will take us another half hour to adjust to the dark.

Night vision is not, of course, the same as our vision is in light. What we perceive by night vision are traces of things and shapes of objects, and we must, by our practice at trying to see in the dark over long and many sessions, train ourselves to attribute proper significance to the traces and shapes we see. In other words, our powers of mental cognition, intuition, and interpretation play a much larger part in our nocturnal perception than they do in our seeing things in the light.

Surely we may perceive many parallels between our calling by the Lord to walk by faith and the operations of night vision. The Word of God teaches us that we live in a dark world, and that Christ—not the sun or moon—is the true light of the world. But we cannot perceive Christ by sight. Hence, we are to pray that our Lord open the eyes of our hearts that we might apprehend the One who is immortal, invisible, the only God and Savior (Eph. 1:18; 1 Tim. 1:17). By our exercise of faith, we perceive our God and the power of His great and precious promises with more accuracy and vital application. We also perceive, not by our eyes beholding the things of the world, but by faith grasping the traces of saving truth contained in a single, unique volume we call the Bible, the person and work of the Son of God. By our growing understanding of Christ’s person and work, apprehended by faith, we come more readily, fully, and consistently to trust Him, rely upon Him, obey, thank, and love Him (1 Pet. 1:6-9).

Our walk by faith that lays hold of the saving truth of God in Scripture is very similar to a man learning to see more with his mind’s eye, while accurately interpreting what the night vision of his eyes enables him to see as mere shapes and traces. A man who knows he is in the dark for the night does not want even flashes of light to help him see, for he knows that when the flash fades he will be blind until his eyes readjust to the darkness. When Peter, James, and John were with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration (Mt. 17:1-8), they ceased exercising their faith in the brightness of the glory they saw shining from Jesus. This lapse of faith led Peter to speak on behalf of himself and the sons of Zebedee some faithless and foolish things. From heaven, God the Father turned off the light and exhorted Peter, James, and John to re-engage their night vision. The Father did this by telling them to hear His beloved Son.

We are to walk by faith, and faith comes by our hearing the Word of God. Through our hearing and believing the testimony of God’s Word, we shall learn to perceive the sanctifying hand of our God even in the darkness of the valley of the shadow of death. We shall learn humility and patience as we realize that our Lord will never show us the fullness of His glory in this life, for the sight would blind us, rather than fill us with true vision. We must live and move and have our being amidst the tokens and pledges of the Lord’s ordinances of grace. We must settle down to the discipline of reading things rightly in light of the whole counsel of God, despite the fact that the very best we can do in this life is to see dimly through the glass of Scripture.

When the Scriptures tell us that our God causes all things to work together for our good, do we proceed to judge the Lord by our feeble sense and darkened understanding? If so, we are walking by false lights that will blind us to the unseen truth and rob us of peace that passes understanding and joy inexpressible. Let us learn to exercise our faith, our night vision through this dark world. 

Faithfully yours,

William Harrell