Apple Of Your Eye

Blog – “Apple of Your Eye” July 15, 2011

“Keep me as the apple of Your eye; hide me under the shadow of Your wing.”
(Psalm 17:8)

I just had cataract surgery on my right eye which brought clear, colorful sight again. When my left eye gets its new lens my renewed eyes will see like in my youth before the lens became cloudy. I didn’t realize how bad my sight was until I got a new lens in my right eye. I now have 20/20 vision in my right eye, but since my left eye isn’t “fixed” yet I still have a little problem with blurred vision.

The word, “apple” of Your eye actually means, “pupil.” As of now, the pupil cannot be replaced. We guard and protect it for we know if the pupil is destroyed our sight is gone. The Psalmist was asking the Father to “keep” him as He would His precious eye. We are precious in God’s sight as the “apple of His eye” (Deut.32:10). The Word says that His very thoughts toward us are “precious” to Him (Psalm 139:17, 18).

Nothing is more precious to me than my eye sight. I guard my eyes, wash them; have them checked, doctored and medicated, if necessary. They are irreplaceable. The pupil of my eye is precious. In the same way, we are vital and precious to the Lord. He wants to keep us safe under the shelter of His wing (his protective presence, close to His side).

What makes us so precious to God? It is because He created us and He loves us with an everlasting love. Just as a child is precious to his parents, God sees us as His children. He sees the "worth" He has created in us. He is building into us the qualities of Himself that will last forever. He is "refining" us as gold and some day when all the dross has been removed, we will come forth as pure gold. But even the unrefined gold is precious because of its potential. The Father wants to make us into “vessels of honor.”

“So whoever cleanses himself from what is ignoble and unclean, who separates himself from contact with contaminating and corrupting influences will then himself be a vessel set apart and useful for honorable and noble purposes, consecrated and profitable to the Master, fit and ready for any good work” (II Timothy2:21) – precious. He is the potter and we are the clay (Isa.64:8). To become a precious vessel of honor we as clay in the Potter’s hand must be yielding and pliable – not my will but yours. We must choose to be yielding and pliable to the Potter, not to temptation (Psalm 1:1-6).

Thank You, Lord, that I am precious to you, I am the “apple of Your eye.” Help me to be yielding and pliable in Your hands so you can mold me into a “vessel of honor,” precious and usable to you.

Have Your Own Way
Adelaide A. Pollard

Have Your own way, Lord! Have Your own way! You are the Potter, I am the clay.
Mold me and make me after Your will, while I am waiting, yielded and still.

Have Your own way, Lord! Have Your own way! Search me and try me, Master, today!
Whiter than snow, Lord, wash me just now, as in Your presence humbly I bow.

Have Your own way, Lord! Have Your own way! Wounded and weary, help me, I pray!
Power, all power, surely is Yours! Touch me and heal me, Savior divine!

Have Your own way, Lord! Have Your own way!! Hold o’er my being absolute sway!
Fill with your Spirit till all shall see Christ only, always, Living in me!