Jesus behind the window

“We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith.” Hebrews 12:2
One day over the summer I was cleaning windows with some high school students at a discipleship camp as a service project (because following God means doing things to serve His people). These windows were super dirty and there was lots of dust and grime all over them, dead bugs on the windowsills, cobwebs all over the place, you could really see a difference after we had finished. The next morning we were doing some worship and I got this image of Jesus behind a window. And possibly because of my experience the day before the window in my mind was fairly dirty. And it got me thinking.
Sometimes in life it can be like we are looking a Jesus through a dirty window. There is all sorts of junk in our life that leaves stains and smudges and distorts our view of Christ. Distractions take our attention away, and draw our focus away from Jesus and on to lesser things. Circumstances get in the way of our relationship with him. Friends come between us and God. We choose to make other things our priority – TV shows, work, sleep, partying. We don’t take time to read the Word. Prayer gets ignored. And the window in our life gets so covered in dirt that we can barely see Christ at all.
But here’s the great thing – windows can be cleaned! Maybe it is time for us to grab a bucket and sponge and start clearing out the dirt from our lives so that we can see Jesus clearly. We need to remove all the things that stop us giving him our full attention. All the things that keep us from having the perfect relationship he wants to have with us.
If you know that you are struggling to keep your eyes on Jesus then it is time to take action. He desires that we give him our all, and that means giving him our full attention, with clear focus. We can’t do that if there is dirt on the window. It is time to clean the window, clear out the junk from our lives, and see Jesus clearly. It is time to remove the distractions, log off Facebook, turn off the TV and open up his inspired Word. Clear out the dirt, and focus fully on Jesus. Thinks don’t necessarily have to be sinful to be a distraction – if they are taking your attention away from Jesus and stopping you having the quality of relationship with him that you should you need to clean them up.
In the words of the Amazing Grace remix Grace like rain “I once was blind, but now I see, so clearly”. It is time to clean the window in our life so that Jesus is not obscured, but that we can see him, so clearly.