Elijah the Tishbite was arguably the greatest of the Old Testament’s prophets. The man was extraordinarily brave, keenly discerning, and profoundly spiritual. He was guided by God in remarkable ways. His actions turned an entire nation from idols to God in a single day.

It is easy to think that there is a great divide between Elijah and people like us. Some preachers actually encourage this kind of thinking. I had a book on my shelves by a late 19^th century author that lionized Elijah. He wrote: “Elijah towers up like a mountain…above all the other prophets. There is a mystery and un-earthiness about Elijah. As Elijah never died, so he was never born, as we are born. Elijah came from God and he went to God. Elijah stood before God till God could dispense with and spare Elijah out of his presence no more.”

So, Elijah is a towering mountain and the rest of us are the merest molehills?  Yet James wrote “Elijah was a man with a nature like ours” (James 5:17, ESV). He had feelings, cares, worries, just like we do. He struggled with doubts. He shared our strengths, but also our weaknesses and foibles.

In 1 King 19:3, we read: “Elijah was afraid and ran for his life.” A more literal translation runs, “Elijah saw and ran for his life.” What was it that Elijah saw, and just how did he see it?

Elijah saw that Queen Jezebel had ordered his assassination. He saw that she had the power to pull it off. He saw that there would be no place in Israel where he could hide. He saw that with him out of the way, the nascent revival that had just begun would die out. He saw that all his sacrifice – years of being on the run, eating scraps, sleeping in caves – would all be for nothing. What he saw left no room for hope.

That is what he saw. But how did he see it? He saw it with his mind’s eye. His imagination could picture it unfolding. And though he did not see all this with physical eyes, it was as real to Elijah as if he had.

When we believe something to be true – whether it is hardly matters – our emotions will respond as if it were true. That is what happened to Elijah. He saw unmitigated disaster, panicked, and lost hope. He became seriously depressed, even to the point of wanting to die.

But what Elijah saw with his mind’s eye was misleading, for it was missing something. It saw, truly enough, Jezebel’s ferocity and Israel’s lack of resolution. It saw days of hardship. But it did not see God.

I, too, have “seen” things with my mind’s eye. I have seen how this person treated me in an unjust manner and why they did so. (It is remarkable how easy it is for the mind’s eye to detect motives!) I have seen how this person’s unexpected absence meant that they were leaving our group. I have seen how the event we are sponsoring will be a success and how that will result in increased momentum, positive morale, and the eventual attainment of our goal. I have seen all this—even when it wasn’t there.

The vision in my mind’s eye is suspect—or at least it should be. On some days this kind of vision is profoundly myopic, on other days it is ridiculously hyperopic, and on almost all days it suffers from a severe astigmatism. Sometimes my mind’s eye sees images that are bright and sometimes dark, but those images are almost always distorted. Nevertheless, I often assume that what my mind’s eye saw was real and accurate, and so my emotions respond accordingly.

Someone might think, and some people have certainly taught, that seeing positive outcomes with the mind’s eye is the essence of faith. But faith is not seeing the outcome we want but seeing the God we serve. Faith sees him who is invisible to the outward eye but perceptible to the eyes of the heart, and it sees him when circumstances are favorable and when they are ruinous, when life is so hard we don’t know how we can survive, and when life is so good we think we must have died and gone to heaven.

The cure – the corrective surgery – for the mind’s eye is an encounter with God. When Elijah understood that God was listening and when he heard God speaking, his vision finally cleared, his depression lifted, and his hope was restored. God supplied the corrective lens for his mind’s eye (see 1 Kings 19:14-18).

God is able to do the same thing for us when our vision is skewed. The trouble is we won’t know when our vision is skewed. That’s why we must learn to recognize hopelessness as a symptom of “Mind’s Eye Disease.” When the vision in our mind’s eye darkens and we start losing hope, we need to go to the One who knows how to “open the eyes of the blind.”