When You Don’t Know If You Really Want To See

Thirty seconds. That’s all it took. Turning down by a smaller town nearby me.

The first car had vapor, billowing from its windows. Like a chimney on fire, the driver pulls a pipe away from his mouth, from behind the steering wheel.

It’s not even lunchtime. Yet, a few cars back, a lady stuffs what appears to be a BigMac, forcefully into her face.

You’d think she was starving by the way her eyes were fixated, both hands wrapped around that meal, waiting for the light to turn green.

Another holds a bottle. Sitting on the curb with a sign asking for handouts. It’s wrapped in paper, hidden, but obvious….This addiction that has over taken him.

I mourn his deep longing. And I want to give, want to see. But do I really?

Yes, I have wept, and prayed, and pleaded with the God who holds eternity….”Lord, won’t you let me see?”

But sometimes it’s difficult.

A kitten slaps hard against our glass front doors. Anger spilled over from a previous incident, and toxic words aren’t quenched by the quiet outdoors, like I had suspected from our newcomer….

All pain needs time and a Healer. Some hurt cannot just be delivered, but must require us choosing it’s exiting from us. 

Still, the comfort of these sins can become our god, something we nestle in, refusing to let them go.

Some habits like anxiety and gossip, and worry and selfishness, must die, no one walking them to the cross, but us.

It is us who must relinquish them and ask for mercy.

The surrendering requires the purposeful bending of our willful hearts. But are we really willing?

The laying down, always more difficult than the taking up.

It is the weakness and defeat that draws us to crawl up near the Savior, not just with words, but with actions finally admitting….“I am done with striving”.

The wind can chase, the prayers of saints can fall and crash and spin around the towers of Babel we have created…

But sometimes, seeing, laying low, requires us to slowly and intentionally take the stones down, slowly, one by one…

Abandoning all idols until wind and time come and erode what we once found delightful, as we built with our very own pride.

And I have asked God frequently to see. “Open my eyes God. Let me see as you see.”

But in this world of hate, and division, in religions made with man-made rules that imprison, allowing sins to emerge, then completely ignoring them….

I wonder if sometimes, it’s better to be blind?

When you drive and spot a world full of God’s children, with His very Spirit intentionally placed in them, vying for their own comfort, their own ease, their own names to be great…

Instead of joyfully delighting in the Father that brought them into existence….

It is easy to get sad. Easy to wonder why the prodigals are more exalted in our society, than the saints?

When children sit on your lap and wonder if a thrown cat is going to get them eliminated from your home, and the hurt is too strong, but at times it’s the only thing children have to hold onto….

How does the God of heaven bare it all?

How do we, broken and carnal, stand amidst His Hope surrounded by this wandering oblivian?

How do we get free to lift our eyes to heaven, so that He can rain down, the promises of peace…

And joy, and love, and goodness?

I want to see, but do I really?

I want to feel the tugging from the images of visible bones on children dying from hunger in Africa….But am I willing to go, surrendered enough to respond?

I see the faces of children walking without parents, begging for someone to rescue them from Chi*a, or Uganda….

But seeing require doing in a world of stagnant sympathizers.

So many, so afraid to get their hands dirty. They would much more prefer to write a check, than bend low and touch the broken….

But didn’t Jesus do that, bend low and get His hands stained by human conditions?

And if we see, really see, won’t that demand us placing aside our idols and comforts, towers of pride and selfishness we have built to a make our own selves great?

Won’t that leaning against a current of this society, mean we won’t be praised or applauded and in fact….

We might be rejected or forgotten….offering us a life far from comfort….

Still, what if we gave ourselves away?

And isn’t the seeing, a prerequisite of receiving His grace?

The steps, not just a walking away from ourselves, but a wrapping of ourselves around His identity and name….

And don’t we all know what happened to Jesus followers?

Not just church bench warmers, but real, layed down children who stand up and see, and are brave enough to go where He calls us?

They were crucfied just like Him….

Layed to a cross, upside down, torn in two, persecuted and promised a life where the world won’t hail you or offer you a following.

And who wants that? I mean, really?

In a world where we idolize our own “likes”, seek to get a “follow”, self-consume our lives so that all eyes can be centered on us. When instead, Isn’t it His face our hands are called to point to?

Isn’t it His heart, which is required of us, to beat next to and long for?

Shouldn’t it be His example we should live toward, not the proud or promoted, the popular, or well recognized….

But the meak and humble, unseen and forgotten, He dwells nearest?

After all, was it really those given the front seat, Jesus recognized? Or was it the widows and orphans and marginalized He wants us to live for?

He died as our model. Painfully piercing the veil to experience this anguish of earth, instead of camping out in heaven.

Jesus was unfraid to see us, even in our sin? And instead of separating, He drew us near…

In our broken state, our dirty and tainted and desperately needy places, Jesus didn’t just call, but He came to us, redeeming us….

So shouldn’t we see, and run to the broken also?

Those falling into sin, those purposefully betraying Him? Yes, Jesus died for them as well, didn’t He?

And so, I ask you, God….Even after the cries from a kitten slammed to the cement after sliding down our front glass door…..

Don’t let me run. Hide. Be blinded again….even though sometimes it’s hard to see.

Help me to know the glory that waits on the other side of this suffering.

Help me to cling to you, loosing idols, believing you are more beautiful than every substitute we use to make oursevles great or into some immortal god….

It is simply your grace, your power, your living sacrifice that saved me on that cross.

Nothing else. No one else.

And for that act of love, I choose to open my eyes to this cause, this purpose working toward man’s full redemption….

Whether immediate or slow and intentional.

I choose to see.

To rise and live and be what you have called me to be.

Because in the end, heaven and earth will pass away. But your name will still be great.

Your Kingdom will last forever….

I choose to see instead of wrap myself in idols, seeking the hope of your glory, reflecting you as a witness.

We were made to be light, in a world filled with darkness. In a land where the people hide in food, and smoke, and drink….He has called us towards freedom.

Freedom to live and love. And see the way He sees, so that His purposes can be accomplished…

On this earth, as it is in heaven.

It’s time to live unafraid, daily asking for His eyes and mercy, and grace. It’s time we rise to live in Imago Dei….the Image of Christ.

Fellow Christians? It’s time to see.