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Walking through a breezeway connected in between two buildings at my work place, I came to windows of another building facing along the Hudson River, during my lunch break. I then sat down around a table and enjoyed a nice view of the scenery across the River. My memory took me back to a previous experience that I had with my family at NYC.

We were sitting around a table and looking out of the window of a restaurant to view NYC’s famous high-rise buildings moving around us (i.e., the restaurant was swiveling). To me, it is a kind of exotic dining experience. This excursion was highly recommended by my wife, based on her prior experience, in order to entertain our in-laws who visited us at that time to have an experience of good food with a good view. Even with her prior knowledge, however, we still spent quite a while in locating the restaurant called “The View”. Funny thing is there were NOT that many New Yorkers around the Time Square knew the place when we approached them. I thought it might be due to the holidays. The not-so-good part is we didn’t make a reservation beforehand. So, we ended up having to wait in a long line due to the popularity of the restaurant. The restaurant was packed but food was good and “the view” was even better. Overall, I would say it is worthwhile. But, let me put a disclaimer here first: It is NOT my intention, whatsoever, to promote the restaurant and I certainly have no association with it.

The experience of “The View” reminds me of our spiritual journey. When we first met our Lord, we may find that the view of Him is so glorious and majestic that how can it be for Him to substitute for us on the cross. Actually from the Bible, we learned that it is His beauty that King David was longing for in his psalm – he asked from God to let him gaze His beauty (瞻仰他的榮美) all the days of his life (Psalm 27:4).  After we received Him as our Lord, we were sanctified. Thus, our view of things started to change accordingly – our focus started to become more Christ centric. The Bible tells us that He opened our spiritual eye so we can see things the way He sees. However, the devil is using every possible means to put a veil over our view. He tempts us with splendor of all the kingdoms of this world in order to sway our focus from God. In our daily Bible reading, we read that Jacob was running away from his father-in-law, Laban, with his household and belongs because God instructed him to leave, in viewing of his mistreatments by Laban. His wife Rachel, however, stole the household idols from her father, Laban (Genesis 31:19), thinking that she could get blessings from those idols. This is a warning to us that sometimes we might mix idols with our belief to cloud our view and this is exactly the devil wants us to do. Are we aware of the scheme from the evil one? Can we resist his “view”? It is worth us to guard our heart because everything we do flows from it (Proverbs 4:23).