This interesting phrase really leaves a lot of room for interpretation. I remember the first time I encountered this little disclaimer. I was shopping for tickets to a Mavericks game through one of the online ticket brokers. These particular seats kept coming up as a great bargain compared to other seats in the same general area. They were not too far up, a bit in the corner, but not too far off the base line. I noticed the fine print that said “obstructed view” right after I clicked purchase, and wondered what I had gotten myself into. Well, as you might imagine, I watched the entire game from these great seats with a clear view of one half of the court, while the other half was only visible through a panel of scratched up safety glass that was directly in front of my seat.

I learned some valuable lessons that day regarding obstructed views. The first being, that they really are discounted. It typically won’t cost you much, at least not full price. The second thing is the obvious, that they are discounted for a good reason. There really is something in the way.

It had been a while since my first encounter with this amazing discount phenomenon, and then out of the blue there it was again. This time I was shopping online for a cruise to whisk my wife away on for some needed rest. This one room kept showing up for about half of what other comparable rooms were priced at. The dates were right, the destination was right, and the price was amazing. But somehow, I just could not get it out of my mind that something was awry.
Then I spotted it, again in small print…“obstructed view”.  Now I will admit that I considered for a moment that it couldn’t possible be that bad, but rationale and past experience won out. My wife is very gracious, loving and understanding. But I knew that if I spent money to take her on a cruise that advertised an ocean view window, and then she had to spend a week looking out at some huge pole or even worse, some spinning radar with flashing lights, then I would never hear the end of it.

Here is the thought that occurred to me. How many people live their whole lives with an obstructed view? Jesus said in Matt. 5:8, “God blesses those people whose hearts are pure. They will see him.” Now I know that this can apply to our eternal security and the promise of seeing God one day if we are Christians, but I also think that it refers to seeing God in the sense that your view of God is not obstructed. That we can see God at work in our lives, we can see God in life’s situations. But when the waters of our hearts are muddied with compromise, then we essentially opt for a discount version of what God desires for us. We can chose to live our lives with the obstructed view at the discount price of half heartedness, or we can pay full price… our whole hearts, and see God.