Like Auggie in Wonder, there is much about our lives that we cannot change. As much as we are able to choose on our own through careful thought or wild abandon, control is something we have not been given, no matter how strongly we fight to take it anyway. The reasoning for this is the most loving thing I can think of, because if we have the ability to control, our view will remain focused on ourselves, on what we want, and what we have to do to get it. Eyes lost in themselves will always be lost.
The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. Matthew 6:22
It is beyond our limited vision where Truth and Beauty lie. It is with the eyes of Christ that light can flood in and enable us to truly see. When His Father in all His omniscient perfection has created a world, our humanity does not have the ability to comprehend the view, it is only with the newness of life that the fuzzy begins to turn to a more clear crystal.
Long ago in my days of teaching, the principal frequently talked about paradigm shifts, a change in how you view a person or a situation that results in a change of approach. Within each believer is the ability to shift, led by the spirit within. Like an artist in the midst of capturing their imagination on canvas, we sometimes need just a slightly different angle, a bit of a head tilt to see what is truly there and what is the core essential for life. You don't have to walk a mile down the road. It just takes a step or two to get a different view.
Baseball season started last weekend and with three boys it makes for a full few months with lots of excitement, lots of disappointments, and lots of red dirt! Last night our oldest had his first game and for an abundant amount of reasons they got crushed by a team they should have been able to stand toe to toe with. But instead of facing the usual sullen, frustrated, teary, angry, boy that typically appears after that type of situation, I looked into a face of peace and good attitude, ready to put that game behind him and move on to the next. Somewhere in that hour and a half his vision changed and with it the ability to see the high and low for what they were and what they could teach instead of blending it all into a failure. My mama heart was beyond thankful for those new eyes last night, even if in the growing up process they don't show up again next time.
Though we can not truly change our hearts alone, we can learn when they need to be changed, when our eyes, the windows to our souls, should be looking elsewhere than the spot they have chosen.
Here are four different times when we need to change the way we see...
1. When you can't tell where you're going.
Whether you choose to read this figuratively or literally, we all get lost sometimes. Driving home from a place you didn't know how to get to in the first place and then now have to reverse directions to get back is tricky. Life is trickier. After plowing through thinking you're going one way, you can look up and see that you recognize nothing around you. This is going to happen. When it does stop, do not keep going without changing what you're seeing. Stop looking at what you don't recognize and look at what you do. What in the midst of the situation looks familiar, do you see Christ anywhere. I promise he's there. He will keep you in perfect peace when your mind is stayed on Him. A promise to cling to from Isaiah 26:3.
The right way to go when you can't tell where you're going could be to turn around and start over or it could be to keep walking forward in faith, but if in all your ways you are acknowledging him, he WILL make your paths straight whatever direction they go.
2. When you're not sure where to look.
Same answer, different situation.
Standing at the edge of decision, afraid of falling if you jump. We all get lost, but then at other times we are all frozen in place not even having started because we have no clue where to even start looking for the "right" thing to do.
If you are Christ's, lovingly held in the palms of your creator, His Good surrounds you with a greater safety than any other harness you wrap around you or any parachute you strap on your back. Step off. The feeling of falling will begin but at the end the safety of his arms will hold you secure and the view around you will be more than worth the first step.
3. When things seem like they are falling apart.
I am not an expert on watching life crumble around me, but that doesn't mean I am not well versed in the topic. If you have a desire to read 31 posts written four years ago, follow along here. Warning: It gets real.
This world is not our home, not built for eternity. No matter what your scientific beliefs and the billions, millions, or thousands of years you think it's been since creation, it is still not made to last forever. A new world is coming. Sometime, somewhere, Jesus comes back and we get to chill with him in that new place that will bring peace and calm and the end of everything we fight against. Until then, we live here, on this earth and all it's magnificence mixed with all of its faults. And when the surface shakes, those faults cause things to crumble. In big chunks or little, the pieces fall down around and it feels like all we can do is watch with our mouths open trying to collect the fragments and hopelessly put them back how they were.
Things fall apart because they were not meant to hold together. Things on this earth are temporary and they will not last as long as we want them to. That is why we can not put our hope in the things that are seen but the things that are unseen because the things that are seen are temporary and the things that are unseen are eternal. Thanks Paul and the Corinthians for that. When something falls apart around you, don't look at the pieces that fell, look instead to what is being built in its place. When you are being made new it's not a cover job, it's not a paint over the old stuff to hide it from view situation. When you are being made new you are pruned and renovated, ripping out all the bad and unneeded so that something else can be planted instead.
When things fall apart, in truth they are actually just being put together differently. Let Him build you.
4. When you are looking at something you know you shouldn't
You can't unsee things. Trust the girl who was convinced to watch the movie Candyman at a sleepover in elementary school and is still scarred 25 years later. You can stuff the memories, you can learn coping strategies, you can heal fully, but you can't unsee. That song 'be careful little eyes what you see' that you sang in preschool children's church a bazillion years ago? That's the most Truth speaking song I know of. Be careful little eyes what you see. Be careful at what you are letting in.
Your eyes are the windows to your soul. Your eyes can bring in light or bring in darkness. Light fills you up and you can see Joy on your face despite the circumstance. But (Matt 6:8) if your eyes is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in your is darkness, how great is the darkness.
Hear me when I say this does not mean turn your head at wrong doing. This does not mean avoid hard situations. This does not mean ignoring an entire people group who aren't doing what you think is right so that you do not "see" evil. Your dedication to your human ideas of morality does not trump God's desire for us to be the hands and feet of Jesus.
But, if you are looking at something you know you shouldn't, if you are allowing darkness to enter in, if you even recognize it and are trying to fight it on your own, I am praying that right in this moment there is a change in the way you see and that your eyes shift to the light.
In this ever changing, ever reinventing, more is better, flashy lights, look at me society around us there are an infinite number of places our eyes can settle. There is lots to see, but where is the focus?
Like Paul to the Ephesians, I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the Hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints. I pray your eyes know where to look and that there they will see light. Pray for me.
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