"God's Eyes"

When I was a kid, one of my favorite videos was a half-hour film of a Mary Rice Hopkins concert. She sang simple Christian kids' songs, and I think there were ten songs on the video. It's one of those videos I watched so many times that if I popped it in the VHS player now, I could probably still sing along with every word. Right before one of the songs, she pulled out a giant yellow pair of glasses, much like these, and she looked around at all the kids and said "Whoaaaaaa..." She said the package they had come in had read, "God's Eyes." She said we would be amazed if we all saw each other as God sees us.

It's amazing how a kid can learn the same lessons as an adult, but the older you get, the deeper meaning the lesson takes on because you can apply it to a longer repertoire of life experience. I have been blessed to have a week off between a mission trip and starting a new semester of college. I spent several hours in the Word each day this week at different coffee shops. One of the main questions I've asked God during this time of meditation is, "How do I relate to others when we're both coming into the relationship with different values, especially about spiritual things and the role of God in our lives?" I long for deep, authentic connections, but I often find myself in a world of surface-level relationships. Anyway, the questions I asked were not so important as one of the answers I uncovered.

I was humbled by the fact that, while I value spiritual reality, I have failed to look at others as they really are IN CHRIST. There are a lot of words that, even after being 'religious' for a long time, can still go in one ear and out the other as religious jargon and don't take on real meaning for the listener. But the fact that we are redeemed by the blood of Christ is not just a line on a page, and it is not something reserved for heaven, it is SPIRITUAL REALITY - it is more real than the reality we can see. For example, Hebrews 10:14 says, "By one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy." Being made holy, I believe, is the process of sanctification where we become more like Christ in the physical, visible realm. But before all that, his work on the cross has made us perfect forever. This is real. All Christians are perfect, because his word and sacrifice make it real. And in the physical realm, this is super-confusing...we ask, "How can my Christian friend really be perfect when I can see he does this or that?" But this is us looking through our own, blind physical eyes. This is where we need to put on the BIG YELLOW GLASSES and look at our Christian brothers and sisters through God's eyes. And when God looks at us, what does he see? CHRIST.

The Christian who struggles with lust? God sees Christ.

The Christian who embezzles money from his employer? God sees Christ.

The Christian who neglects his wife and kids for the sake of his job? God sees Christ.

The Christian who keeps tumbling to laziness? God sees Christ.

The Christian who, like me, has embraced God's grace for herself but struggles with pride and with seeing that God gives just as much grace to every other Christian? God still sees Christ.

That is the most humbling part - that I don't deserve for God to see Christ every time he looks at me, but he does, and the least I can do is be intentional about seeing Christ when I look at everyone else. Seeing Christ isn't just a metaphor...it is the spiritual reality that we can't see until God lifts our spiritual blindness (aka causing our faith to grow). But think about what that would really mean? If every time I walked people sitting in the computer lab playing computer games and thought, Christ is sitting there, how would my actions, and even my attitude toward them, be different? Every time my mom asked me to do the dishes, would my insides grumble if I heard Christ asking me to do the dishes? Every time I pass a student in the hallway that I'm inclined to dislike because I dislike some of his or her habits, what if I saw Christ walking down the hallway? Would I intentionally say hello? Would the attitude of my heart at least be different? I hope that this would be true at the very least.

Sometimes Bible stories lose their meaning when we've heard them so many times until you hear them explained in a new way. I've heard the following story many times, but there's more to it than I ever gave it credit for:

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ Matthew 25:34-40

TRULY, he says. Not metaphorically. Truly. By Christ's blood, we are spiritually perfected and Christ lives in us. Often our process of sanctification involves simply being aligned with and agreeing with the truth. I want to leave you with one final image from C.S. Lewis's sermon "Weight of Glory," who is far more articulate than I, which helps me to further grasp this truth:

It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbour. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat—the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.

Humbly IN CHRIST, as are you if you are his redeemed child,

Megan