Open His Eyes That He May See

His friend is going under and he can see the whole thing from the outside with terrible clarity.

He can see that the job going was not the end of him. He can see that his wife has not left and is not going to. He can see three or four people who would carry him if he asked, and one of them has a spare room and has said so twice.

And his friend cannot see any of it. Not because he is stupid. Because something has closed over his sight, the way weather closes over a coast, and from inside it there is only the one horizon.

He has tried to say it. Fourteen or fifteen times now, in different words, at different hours, on the phone and in person and once, badly, in a text message he regrets.

Each time his friend agrees politely and remains exactly where he was.

Here is the sentence he has never said out loud.

He has started to feel that his friend is choosing this, and he is ashamed of that thought, and it keeps arriving anyway at about four in the morning.

Read what Elisha did with a frightened man

There is a moment in Kings with a servant panicking and a prophet who does not explain anything to him.

And Elisha prayed, and said, LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the LORD opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.2 Kings 6:17

Open his eyes, that he may see.

Notice what Elisha does not do. He does not argue. He does not produce evidence. He does not tell the young man to calm down, or to have more faith, or to look properly, all of which would have been true and none of which would have worked, because the horses were already there and the man was already looking.

The problem was never the quantity of the evidence. It was the eyes.

And notice where he directs the prayer. Not at the young man. At God, about the young man, in his hearing, and briefly.

Your friend's difficulty is his sight rather than his information, and 2 Kings 6:17 has a prophet praying for eyes instead of producing an argument. That is what the word actually shows him doing, not a substitute I am offering, and the Holy Spirit is the One who opens what fifteen conversations could not.

Fifteen conversations were not wasted

Now the plain thing, and it has two parts and I mean both.

The conversations were not pointless. A man in weather like that remembers, later, who kept talking to him, and almost none of it lands at the time, and that is not a measure of whether it mattered.

And the four in the morning thought needs handling honestly rather than being buried. It is not wicked. It is what happens to a person who has poured out fifteen attempts and watched them vanish, and it arrives as exhaustion wearing the clothes of a judgement.

But it is not accurate. The young man in Kings was not choosing to see a hostile army instead of horses of fire. His eyes were shut and he did not know it, and that is the closest thing to a description of what you are watching that I know of.

And nothing about fifteen unheard conversations has ever meant your friend is refusing. Scripture describes a man who could not see what was already surrounding him, and the Holy Spirit is not treating a man in the dark as a man being difficult.

Stand there, and pray it elsewhere

Here is the practical piece, and it has two halves that go together.

Be beside him without explaining anything.

Go out with him. Sit in the van. Take the boat out. Be present in a way that requires nothing from him, and do not make the case, and if he raises it, listen instead of correcting the picture.

And then, where he cannot hear you, pray Elisha's prayer. Short, exactly as it is written, using his name. Lord, open his eyes, that he may see.

That is not giving up on saying anything. It is aiming at the thing that is actually shut, and it is the only part of this that has ever been in reach.

You are able to stop making the case and stay entirely with him, and the two were never the same act. 2 Kings 6:17 has Elisha praying open his eyes rather than assembling the evidence, and the Holy Spirit is the One who does that in a man weather has closed over.