What’s There? What’s Not? (7/26/2023)

Last evening at 9:15, I walked to my kitchen windows to close the blinds. In the distance, I saw it, a red orange flickering. I panicked. We are in a drought situation. I am surrounded by huge white pines and very dry grass. If a grass fire took off, it would be hard to put out before there was extensive damage. I grabbed my phone and called the neighbor closest to what I was seeing. Turns out, it was emergency vehicles on a street I didn’t even know I could see from my kitchen window.

What I thought I saw and what I did see were two different things. Don’t you find that life is like that often? We can judge incorrectly situations, things, people, and motives. At times our judgment is affected by what we fear most, as in the case of my seeing red orange flickering and immediately concluding that it was fire because nothing has ever scared me more than fire. At other times, we see what we want to see and dismiss what we don’t; we see this happening in politics all the time, but it can happen in our personal lives as well when we only see what affirms what we already believe.

I frequently speak about this when I am speaking to teens about our faith in the one LORD. I ask if any of them has ever run a stop sign. I always get at least one honest one in the group who admits to this offense. I ask why they think they ran the stop sign. They give various answers, but then I suggest that the real reason is that they didn’t expect or believe there was going to be a sign there. The bottom line, I explain to them, is that we humans have the capability of not seeing large, red signs if we don’t believe they are going to be there. My point? Seeing isn’t believing. No, Believing is seeing.

Let us take time today, as we continue our journeys of faith, to really ask ourselves, what do we believe? And then throughout the day to look for it. We believe there is a LORD. Let us look for signs of our LORD’s power and presence and acknowledge it. We believe that our LORD is loving and merciful. Let us look for signs of this love and acknowledge it. Let us put down our fears and pick up our hope. Let us seek to see the LORD more clearly at work in our lives and world and acknowledge that to ourselves as well as point it out to others.

What’s really there? What’s not? May this be a day of clear vision for faithful disciples.

Until tomorrow, let us all love well.