Proverbs 15:30 ESV
The light of the eyes rejoices the heart, and good news refreshes the bones.
[https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=proverbs+15%3A30&version=ESV]
Sickness of the body is a universal human experience. We all can remember a snotty nose or a headache or a stubbed toe. Too many of us know all about serious injuries, chronic illness, even the death of a loved one to pathogen or accident. Sickness of the body is obvious and understood, if entirely unenjoyable. Just as much as our bodies hurt, though, our souls also hurt. We live in a sinful world, and as bacteria and viruses, set astray by the Fall, are liable to knock our bodies out of commission, so too the vices of ourselves and everybody else make our soul hurt. We have medicine for the first, but what do we have for the second?
This verse has a prescription for us: the light of the eyes and good news. The medicine is at least quickly named, but the first half is a little unclear, the second half frustratingly general. What is ‘the light of the eyes’ and where do we find news good enough to matter with all the problems we find, all the problems we cause for ourselves?
The light of our eyes is the entrance of all that is good without us into our hearts. Matthew 6:22 gives us an understanding of this imagery, beyond the intuitive: “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light.” By the eye we perceive the world, and in seeing we bring the world into our hearts to be understood. In the world we see, it is true, much evil. We see men sin; we see the innocent hurt; we see what was good break down. This, though, is not all the world.
The two halves of the verse, in truth, are parallel in meaning. The ‘light of the eyes’ is to receive ‘good news’, and both rejoice the heart. The world has in it, after all, some good news. To eyes that seek it, even, good news is victor, even in this life, provided we see it with eyes that remember eternity. We can see, with these eyes, the hand of God around us. We can see those we love; we can see justice done despite man’s efforts; we can see the beauty of the natural world in its rightful place, neither god nor foe to man.
Eyes that remember eternity can estimate the truth and worth of what they see in a way man’s foolish eyes cannot (Matt. 13:13). To eyes still shelled-over by sin, this world is meaningless or even evil. Pain comes, and pain goes, and pain returns again. This cycle visits itself, it seems, on everything that lives, and in the end it dies. All is vanity, as the Preacher found, to the man without God, and evil has no explanation, no counterweight, for good is more ephemeral, always weaker (Ecc. 1:2, 12:8).
Whom God calls, He gives eyes that are new. The eyes of the Christian are the eyes of faith, faith in God and His promises (Heb. 11:1-2). To the Christian, the pain of this life is very real but only a beginning. Sickness of heart he must face, and it will be dark indeed. David did not jest when he spoke of the ‘valley of the shadow of death’ (Ps. 23:4); the psalmist did not lie when he wrote, “My days pass away like smoke, and my bones burn like a furnace” (Ps. 102:3). The Christian will hurt deeply indeed, but at the end of his hurt he will see always the Lord and His mercy.
This is the end of the Christian: to know God’s love in His fullness. By this all pain is sanctified, seen for chastening and not judgement (Heb. 12:5). By this the Christian sees each little goodness of the world as a reflection of His high and overwhelming goodness. By this he remembers that when all the evils and pains of his life are rotted to naught, the littlest good this life presents will shine as bright as before, the smallest gesture, the merest glimpse. Good lives to eternity, and evil falls impotent at the wayside.
This joy, even amidst terrible agony, reaches so far it does not stop with the soul. The good news of the Lord is fit to revive the body as well as the soul. Our bodies, of course, are mortal in this life; we will all die in His time. Yet, in presaging of the final renewal of the flesh which will come, the raising of these bodies in perfection (1 Cor. 15:42-43), we find that His good news can enliven this flawed flesh. It truly ‘refreshes our bones.’
Beyond even this, though, when all is stripped from us, we have a final comfort. It is the comfort of those who “were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life,” those who “suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment,” who “were stoned…, sawn in two…., killed with the sword,” of those saints too who “went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated…., wandering in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth” (Heb. 11:35-38). It is the comfort of Job, and his words shall tell it to us: “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another” (Job. 19:25-27).
God bless.
Written by Colson Potter
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
