So, we got a little snow the other day and here's a shot of Norah out in it!



Seeing the Invisible

Have you ever pretended to see something that you really couldn’t? Like, remember when the big thing was those Magic Eye books? You know, the ones with abstract computer generated images that supposedly had other 3D images imbedded in them that would fly out at you if you looked at them in a certain special way? Yeah, well I tried for years to see the magic pictures in those books. I would focus and unfocus my eyes, turn my head, turn the book, stick my nose on the page, stick my eyeball on the page, concentrate, empty my mind, cross my eyes, stand on my head and I even tried praying a couple of times, but I never saw a blasted thing. To be honest, I think the whole thing was a big hoax… like the Emperor’s New Clothes of the 90’s where no one wanted to admit they couldn’t see the thing because seeing it was the cool thing to do.

Well, lately I have noticed something coming up a bunch in the Scriptures… and that is, the importance of ‘seeing’ God. This wasn’t a subject I went looking for during my time in the Word or anything, it has just sort of happened. In the past few months I’ve just been noticing what seems to be the huge importance of seeing Him and I don’t really get it. It’s actually been a bit troubling to me in my reading and thinking about Scripture because I’ve never actually seen God, and in fact, the Apostle John tells us three times that no one has ever seen God. So what in the world am I supposed to do with the fact that seeing Him is apparently super important and no one’s ever done it?

Check this out: Psalm 17 says, “And I in righteousness will see your face; when I awake, I will be satisfied with seeing your likeness.” Psalm 25:15 says, “My eyes are ever on the Lord, for only He will release my feet from the snare.” Psalm 34:5 says, “Those who look to Him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame.” When the writer of Hebrews gets all cranked up talking about Moses in chapter 11 and how he left riches and power to follow God and rescue Israel it says that Moses “persevered because he saw Him who is invisible.” And in the very next chapter we are encouraged to “fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.”

How can I see Him who is invisible?! How can I fix my eyes on a person I can’t see? “My eyes are ever on the Lord?!” What if my eyes are never on the Lord?!

Obviously we don’t have to physically see Him with our eyes, but what is seeing Him really all about then? For the answer to this question, I turn as usual to my resident theologian: my four-year old daughter… You see, whenever Anna is playing with little Lego people, one of them is Jesus and the rest are the ‘little children’ who came to Him in Matthew 19. When Anna wraps up a baby doll to mother and care for it, it’s almost always the baby Jesus. She loves to take care of Him. The other day we went on a walk and Anna picked up a little branch that had fallen from a pine tree. She stuck her arm above her head and started to wave it around like she was dancing. When we asked her what she was doing, she said, “I’m waving this branch to my favorite boy!” (a.k.a. Jesus) You see, Jesus just colors everything in her world. She doesn’t have one part of her life that He’s not included in… she sees Him everywhere, in that she sees everything through the lenses of His existence in her life, her love for Him and His activity in her life. Isn’t that how you do it? Isn’t that how you see Him who is invisible?