the better to see you with my dear

I have always wanted glasses. I think it would improve my look. However, my eyesight is basically superhuman. I have a hard time hearing some things and can’t smell a burning cigarette three feet from me, but I would make a hawk feel like a bat. So as I was driving home from work the other day I got to pondering about wanting glasses. And thus, this post was born…

Glasses enable a person to see things they normally would struggle with seeing. But beyond near or far-sightedness, there are things we cannot see at all. Feelings, hurts, joys and spirits are what are really going on beyond the scenes of the behind the scenes. We are constantly in battle because of the outward and inward tension in life.

I want to learn to see these things. Not just that though, I think its possible.

I think its pretty cool how a see-able physical action like a hug or a cry can help to heal an unsee-able thing like a hurt. Everyone knows that your smile goes away when you get bad news. But it works backwards too!

That’s not the point though…

I am perplexed by 2 Corinthians 4 and in particular verse 10, "We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body."

I am still not sure what that means. But if it means what I think it means, then that makes me feel okay. Not that the mistakes, guilt or pain is meant to be okay with. But, rather, that it is part of the Christian’s journey.

I often joke that church people are the only ones in this world who think they are not guilty of anything. I know where that comes from. But there is a difference between being forgiven and not-guilty. Forgiven presupposes guilt.

Oops. That’s not the point either.

Here is the point. Maybe it ties my tangents together and makes them less tangentish. Tangenty?

Perhaps the inward things and outward things that constantly press on us shouldn’t make me feel like I am losing my mind… perhaps they are perfectly normal.

          "Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."

                                                                 2 Corinthians 4:16-18

So I am going to focus on the unseen things… looking beyond the things that are easy to see.