God's all-seeing eye

The eyes of the Lord are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the good. Proverbs 15:3

I used to visit a home where, the first thing you saw when you went in the front door, was a plaque on the wall: “Christ is the head of this house: the unseen guest at every meal; the silent listener to every conversation” - as if Jesus was some kind of ghostly presence, lurking in shadowy places, quite unlike the Jesus we meet in the Gospels.

I was only a child at the time, but I used find this – well, it would be too much to say spooky, but certainly slightly unsettling. When, later, I read George Orwell’s novel Nineteen eighty-four, with its frightening slogan “Big Brother is watching you”, I couldn’t help but be reminded… And the same thing applied when I first read Proverbs 15:3 and other similar Bible verses.

God’s “all-knowingness”, known technically as his “omniscience”, has been part of the church’s faith since the beginning. A simple question arises: Are verses like Proverbs 15:3 good news or bad? to be welcomed or frightened by?

Well, a lot depends, of course, on where (as they say) “you’re at” in your life.

If I’m living a life of conscious, knowing disobedience to God, then certainly there’s a lot to be troubled by. “It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God”, we read in Hebrews10:31, reminding us that God is far from being a kind of all-indulgent grand-father-in-the-sky. He is burningly holy, perfect in every respect, and ultimately our judge. Our verse makes clear that he ”keeps watch on the wicked” as well as on the good.

So it sounds as if Proverbs 15:3 is really not good news at all, not, that is, for the wicked. And yet can we not see even that in another way: may those words not also be a generous warning? The Bible tells us that “God is not willing that anyone should perish, but that everyone should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). He wants us to become sensitive to the reality of our sin, so that we have opportunity to turn around and make a fresh start – what Jesus called “being born again”, in fact. And if passages like Proverbs 15:3 shake us out of our carelessness and sin, shouldn’t we be thankful for them?

God loves sinners. How easily we forget that greatest of all truths! I remember the first time somebody pointed out to me (I had somehow simply never noticed it before) that while Jesus could, and did, display quite ferocious anger, it was always with those who he felt were misleading the people, the religious leaders, and never (literally never, according to all four Gospels) with the “ordinary people” themselves.

Think of Jesus’ meeting with the Samaritan woman at the well. He saw right through her; he knew her life was one dominated by sin. Surely a fierce blast of condemnation would have been appropriate? But no: he treated her with patience and compassion.

And what about those large crowds that flocked to hear him? They will have had their quota of liars and thieves, of cheats and adulterers, won’t they? Yet what do we read about Jesus’ feelings for them? Here is one of the most beautiful verses in the New Testament: “When he saw  the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Mathew 9:36). Sinners, yes, like all of us; but loved by Jesus.

So even for the worst of sinners Proverbs 15:3 can be seen as good news: God loves us enough to sound a serious warning: the question is, Am I wise and humble enough to change?

We should add too that many of those who were out of step with God were like that largely because they had never been taught. They weren’t, as I put it earlier, “living a life of conscious, knowing disobedience to God”, they were simply ignorant, “like sheep without a shepherd”: they were lost souls. How things stand with the untold millions who are like that today we can only guess. But we know that God is not only a holy, judging God, but also a merciful God. (The tricky passage Romans 2:12-16 throws some light on this.)

I’ve focussed on the fact that God “keeps watch on the wicked”, possibly bad news, possibly good, depending on how we respond.

But of course the other part of Proverbs 15:3 is nothing but good news: he also “keeps watch on the good”. Those who are in a relationship of love, faith and obedience with God can be assured that his eyes are on them every moment of day or night, whatever their circumstances may be. It may not always feel like that, especially at times of sickness, sorrow and other forms of suffering. But that is where we have to muster our childlike faith and commit ourselves into the hands of our loving heavenly Father.

In our worst times we may be inclined to doubt, even to be bitter: “If God sees what I’m going through, then why doesn’t he do something?” To which, of course, there is no simple answer: we simply don’t know the mind and purposes of God. But we cling on, fortified by the solid faith of someone like Paul (who knew a lot about suffering): “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18).

Yes, those can sound like easy, shallow words. At times like that, may God help us to see with new clarity the reality of Jesus’ horrifying death on the cross – and the glory of his rising again.

Remember, Christian… “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived – the things that God has prepared for those who love him – these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit” (1 Corinthians 2:9).

Lord, thank you for the assurance that even in the worst times of my life, your loving, fatherly eye is upon me, and give me faith to believe that you have in store for me wonders beyond imagining. Amen.