"Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, "Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it." Genesis 28:16
So often in my life I have found myself blind to stupendous realities. Blind because I didn't know how to see. Blind because I was too busy and hurried. Blind because my mind was caught up in myself. Blind because of living in the world I call "someday". Have you ever lived in the world of "someday"? To live in "someday" is to be so busy trying to get to where you want to be that you forget where you are and what is being offered by the kind grace of God at this present moment. Living for someday has often caused me to miss a lot of "today's".
How much have I missed because I have been so blind? Have much have I missed because I was just too busy to look? In my case it has been both. That is why in my spiritual journey, I have needed so much help. I am eternally indebted to C.S Lewis, Jonathan Edwards, Ken Gire, and John Piper who have opened my eyes to see more of life than I ever knew could be seen.
I have felt often like Jacob after awaking from his dream in Genesis 28:16-17, "Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it." And he was afraid and said, "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven." Have you ever felt like this before?
B.B. Warfield in thinking about what the scriptures teach on predestination wrote,
"A glass window is before us. We raise our eyes and see the glass; we note its quality, and observe its defects; we speculate it's composition. Or we look straight through it on the great prospect of land and sea and beyond."
Ken Gire writes that the most rigorous of disciplines is the discipline of awareness. We must always be looking beyond what we see if we are going to truly see and listening beyond what we hear in order to truly hear. The sinfulness of man blinds him to the most wondrous and stupendous of realities! Our Lord spoke often of spiritual blindness and deafness. That is why the scriptures say that salvation is the gift of sight from God by the Holy Spirit that enables us to be able for the first time to see Jesus for who He is and to savor Him for all that He is worth.
"In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" ( 2 Corinthians 4:4-6).
We now have been graced with the capacity to see but are we looking and listening? Jesus always has something to say to us and always shows us something we need to see and always offers something we need to receive. But even with this gift of sight, we have to cultivate awareness. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:18, "And we all, with unveiled face, (as we continue to be in the word of God) beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit." (My translation)
We have to cultivate awareness in our life. The poet Elizabeth Barret Browning wrote,
"Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit around it and pluck blackberries."
Have you ever passed a bush plucking raspberries and thinking raspberries were all that was there? How many times have we failed to see the heavenly blaze in earthly bushes we brush by on our way to somewhere else?
John Piper spoke of being around Clyde Kilby who he described in this way: “When he spoke of a tree he saw on the way to class in the morning, you wondered why you had been so blind all of your life…I sat there and for the first time I saw things. I felt. I was drawn into the bright day of wakefulness out of my self-preoccupied, adolescent slumbers”.
Oh to see things! oh to be awake and alive to God, to people, to nature, to culture, to the present moment! Brother Lawrence called it "Practicing the Presence of God" and in that light Mike Mason added a second practice that he called "Practicing the Presence of People".
There is no time, no place, no moment, no event, that God is not there and is not speaking something for me to hear and showing me something for me to see. Our lives are full of stupendous realities aren't they? But these moments will go unnoticed if we do not take the time to stop, look, and listen. C.S. Lewis wrote,
"To see what is in thee moments we first have to stop, and then we must look and go on looking until we see exactly what is there."
It means we must learn to "be still and know that I AM God" (Psalm 46:10). Anne Morrow Lindbergh called it striving to be the still axis within the revolving wheel of relationships, obligations and activities. the still axis. It is to be able to maintain its center no matter how fast our lives are turning. Ask God to give you eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart to receive this day beyond what you see, hear, and receive. Ask Him to help you to stop plucking blackberries and to take off your shoes for this moment is holy ground!
Longing for eyes to see more of life than I ever knew could be seen!
Pastor Bill
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