Guidance

Different versions translate this passage differently. I like how the New King James version translates it:

"I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will guide you with My eye."

I have three observations I would like to make, particularly pertaining to the last part of this verse:

1) Although God promises to teach and guide us, He doesn't promise that He will always do it by His voice. In fact, He instructed the Israelites from Mt. Horeb with His voice (when He gave them the Ten Commandments), but their hearts were far from Him. One must be closer to be lead by someone's eye.

2) What comes to mind for me with the phrase "guide you with My eye" is, humanly speaking, the picture of someone using their eyes to gesture toward something that they are seeing, that they want someone who is looking at them to see as well. The guidance (or understanding), in this case, comes when you are seeing what they are seeing. In such a way, when we seek God's face, He may give us a picture or understanding in our spirits with regard to something He is seeing that He wants us to see.

This sort of guidance is not merely guidance through direction, but it actually transforms us, through drawing us closer to God's heart. We draw closer to Him, and He shares a bit of His heart with us, and by this experience and vision we are changed. This is far different from the simple, distant "do this, do that" sort of direction. Guiding us with His eye more closely fits His desires for us: knowledge of Him, intimacy with Him, not just doing works.

3) Another way someone can be guided by another's eye, although I am not entirely sure whether this was part of the original intent of the passage, is worth noting: it is the case of a blind person being lead by a sighted one. The fact is, God doesn't always show us the full picture of where He is leading us -- in fact, I don't know that He ever does. But HE sees; and a blind person stays very close to the sighted person who is guiding them, in fact they always remain in physical contact; and as they must fully trust the sighted person, that they are seeing clearly how things are, and know where they are going, and will lead them safely, so we are with God as well.

Created about 2 years ago