Julia explores a phrase tucked into the Sermon on the Mount: "The eye is the lamp of the body... if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light" (Matthew 6:22). She traces the Greek word emblepō — to gaze, to look intently — through Jesus' invitation to "consider the birds of the air" and into the courtyard where "the Lord turned and looked straight at Peter" after his denial. Anxiety, she suggests, is a disease of vision: what we fix our attention on shapes what fills us. She invites listeners to consider what has held their attention this week. Closing prayer: "In the busyness of this day, grant me a stillness of seeing, O God..." — a prayer by J. Philip Newell, from Celtic Benediction: Morning and Night Prayer.

The Comfortable Words is written and recorded by Eric and Julia Pickerill.
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