So, here’s a bit of background.  I love critters and birds. . .like A LOT.  A month or two ago, I noticed this bright orange bird that I don’t normally see around my backyard. Well, “just so happened”, my friend Tracy knew that it was a Baltimore Oriole, and she suggested that I put out some grape jelly on something red or orange, as well as putting out oranges for them.  I had the jelly, so I put some out, and they began coming regularly to feed.  During my next shopping trip, I bought a bag of navel oranges and I “MacGyver’d” a homemade orange “feeder” out of a plastic sandwich container hung from a hook by two tied-together hiking boot laces… haha!  They loved it!  Double win!  

So last evening, the oranges were pretty well cleaned out, leaving not much but the empty little “peel bowls”.  I was reaching to take it down from the hook when my hubby warned me of all the fruit flies around the peels.  Trouble was, I didn’t see any fruit flies.  I told him so, and he suggested that I leave the feeder hanging there and move over to where he was standing. When I looked at the feeder against the light of the sky, I was SHOCKED by the number of little black pests that were swarming above that feeder.  

I didn’t think much of that interplay at the time, but as I was out on the tractor this morning, I kept getting hit in the face with little gnats, and that unpleasant feeling brought back the memory of the fruit flies the evening prior.  The Spirit began to teach me an object lesson. 

What I couldn’t see from my perspective last night, looking at the feeder against the dark brown background of the porch post, became visible to me when looking at the feeder against the light of the sky.  A change of perspective was all that I needed to see clearly what was previously not visible to me.  

How often our views and perspectives on things and people are affected because the backdrop of what we are viewing them against is dark.  Just like I needed a change of perspective (looking against the light of the sky versus against the dark of the pole) to see the little pests, I need to look at my thoughts and feelings against the light of the Word of God and not against the darkness of my feelings and the darkness of culture in which I live.  

“The eye is the lamp of the body; so if your eye is clear [spiritually perceptive], 
your whole body will be full of light [benefiting from God’s precepts]. 
But if your eye is bad [spiritually blind],
 your whole body will be full of darkness [devoid of God’s precepts]. 
So if the [very] light inside you
[your inner self, your heart, your conscience] is darkness,
how great and terrible is that darkness!”
 ~~‭‭Matthew‬ ‭6:22-23‬ ‭AMP‬‬