Main Reference: Ephesians 1:18-19

If you’ve ever stumbled through your house in the dark, you know that even perfect vision is useless without light. Turn on the lights, and you see everything.

That’s what Paul means when he prays ‘that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened’ (Ephesians 1:18). It’s not a prayer for some kind of super-spiritual X-ray vision but that God would enable them to see everything they’d experienced in the best light, in His light.

What do they need to see? The scope and fullness of God’s rich salvation. First, it’s grounded in hope, something the Gentile Ephesians didn’t have before their encounter with Jesus. They were outside God’s kingdom, but now, in Christ by God’s calling, they have become God’s people. That reality transforms not only their future but their present. God has made them part of his inheritance, his treasured people who will show his glory to the universe. And God doesn’t expect them to rely on their own strength against the dangerous powers in the world. The King and the kingdom’s resources, as Jesus promised, were ‘at hand,’ and they have God’s ‘boundless’ power working for and in and through them (v. 19).

We should join Paul in praying for a perspective illuminated by the gospel. Despite the world’s apparent darkness, we pray that we and others can live in the light and hope and power of God’s good news.