“[Reality] is not neat, not obvious, not what you expect.” – C.S. Lewis
The refrigerator, for me, is akin to my wife’s purse. She puts things in her purse and then spends fifteen minutes trying to find them. I go to the refrigerator and open it looking for whatever. Most recently, ketchup. Big red bottle with a white cap. I know what I am looking for and I know what it looks like. So, I open the doors . . . both of them. (our frig has two upper doors and a lower pull-out drawer for the freezer). The Ketchup is not on the top shelf, it's not on the middle shelf, I look behind everything on the bottom shelf and it is not there. So I figure that it must be on one of the shelves on the doors. I move things around. There is French’s Mustard, a couple of bottles of green olives, some horse radish, Frank’s Hot Sauce, Texas Pete’s Hot Sauce, and Tabasco Hot Sauce. A couple of jars of jams and jellies, some butter, Hoisin & Teriyaki Sauces, and some stone-ground brown mustard, and a bottle of “what’s-that-here-shire sauce”. But, no Ketchup. Maybe it is all gone. I call out to my wife who is in the other room, “Honey, are we out of ketchup?” She replies, “I don’t think so. I think it is on the middle shelf of right-hand door.” I doubt she knows what she is talking about, so I say that I have looked. Less than a second passes and she is standing right by my side. “It’s right there where I told you it was, right there behind the parmesan cheese.” Embarrassing. I mumble thanks trying to figure out how I missed it.
Life seems to be filled with things that too easily we miss or over-look. Too many times, we see things, but don’t see; or we hear something, but we don’t really hear it. In Matthew 13:15-16 Jesus was talking to His disciples and He said, “ For the hearts of these people are hardened, and their ears cannot hear, and they have closed their eyes—so their eyes cannot see, and their ears cannot hear, and their hearts cannot understand, and they cannot turn to me and let me heal them.’ “But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear.”
Jesus equates seeing and hearing with the ability to be made whole. Hardness of heart prevents people from hearing or seeing the things that would lead them to life. We sing a song that is my heart crying out to God asking to have a heart that can see Him in all of His glory. “Open the eyes of my heart Lord. Open the eyes of my heart, I want to see You. I want to see You. . . To see You high and lifted up, shining in the light of Your glory. I want to see You.” May the Lord increase our ability to see and hear Him so that we can find the life that He intends for all of His children.
In Christ's Love,
John
Comments