Your ShelfYour Projects

Note and Comment

17%

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 11, 1916

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 93, No. 24.

Read the full edition

Note and Comment

A New Vision

How many there are in the world today, and some even in the work of God, who need a new vision. Their horizon has become circumscribed. They view questions from the standpoint of selfish consideration, present convenience, or sectional interest. The little things of life have become the important things in their estimation. Personal considerations have become exalted above great principles.
Labor with such individuals over the particular points of weakness in their character oftentimes avails but little. They see through a glass darkly, and therefore they are inclined to entirely misunderstand the purpose of such labor. By no amount of persuasion or reasoning can they come to view things from a different standpoint. To them their view is normal and logical and consistent.
Their only hope is in obtaining a new vision,—a vision of God and his work, of the great principles underlying his work, and of their relationship to these principles. It was this new vision which, when received by Job, changed his conception of God. He says, “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” It was this new vision of Jesus Christ which transformed Saul the persecutor into Paul the mighty apostle. This new vision took David from the sheepcotes among the hills of Judea and made him the sweet singer of Israel, the king of God’s chosen heritage. This vision caused the riches of Egypt to sink into insignificance in Moses’ estimation, and led him to cast in his lot with a race of slaves, to suffer privation and hardship, enduring “as seeing him who is invisible.”
Such a vision will transform our lives and change our hearts. It will lead us to self-abnegation, self-forgetfulness. It will lead us to suffer long and be kind. It will lead us to rise above the low, mean, petty things of life, above the spirit of sordid considerations and selfish indifference, and to think the thoughts of God after him.