Believing Is Not-Seeing

Why do we close our eyes when we pray? To eliminate distractions? To show reverence? Those are both definitely important. But I think one of the main reasons that we close our eyes during prayer is that it strengthens our belief. When Thomas finally believed that Jesus had risen after seeing Him with his own eyes, “Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” (John 20: 29). Jesus said that we are blessed when we have not seen, that we have a greater possibility for belief. The things that we can see are all temporal and temporary. None of the ‘real world’ is as real as our Heavenly Father is. We always assume that seeing trumps believing, that it is more real and more concrete and more tangible. But when we close our eyes, we shut out all of the things we can see, and we give our spirit the room it needs for us to believe more strongly and more purely so that we can ‘see’ our Heavenly Father and the spiritual, everlasting, eternal world that He inhabits and to which we are destined to return if we can only begin to rely more on our Spiritual sight and our belief, rather than being satisfied with our mere physical sight. Next time that we close our eyes to pray, let us imagine the the temporal, physical world disappearing, and the distance between us and our Heavenly Father dissolving. Our Heavenly Father is only ever an eyelid’s thickness distant from us.