Deepening our Christianity

the Monday Newsletter of Paul Prins

Edition #29 · 4 March 2024

Blessings Reader,

What is Hard to See

Our sight is one of our strongest senses. We can often see things far before we can hear or smell them. Touching and tasting are deeply intimate in comparison to sight. There is proximity needed to touch and feel. Taste needs even more. We need it to enter our bodies for that sense to work. Sight is the sense that most often introduces and defines our world.

It is often one of the senses we most try to rebel against. We tell one another to not judge by appearance. We deeply value the wonder and beauty of art and natural vistas. We also fail to see the work it takes to see. To truly see the world around us. There are things in the places we live, work, and move that are visually loud. For a thousand different reasons, the brightness of these sights makes it hard to see. The darkness of these sights makes it hard to see.

I was recently walking around a city with a group of missionaries. There was a planned exercise designed to help better understand the city. We were guided to see the ‘idols’ of the city. To fan the flames of our inability to see. We weren’t asked into calm and quiet so the Spirit of God could reveal to us their presence amidst the drug use, the sex work, the capitalism, gluttony, and greed. No. We were not learning to see the beauty, love, grace, and presence of God in these people and places. Instead, we were asked how the gospel would critique and respond to this waywardness.

To my anticipated disappointment, the answer was not to meet God among our beloved siblings. The answer was to intellectualize lived and felt experiences. Even if those answers were good (and some were), none of us had the relationships to share with any of these people. The ‘fruit’ of this exercise led us to not see God in the midst of the people and spaces before us. Instead of seeing what is hard to see, people and lives became objects to think about.

Until Next Week

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Unpublished Photo for this Edition

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A Prayer for the Week to Come

Jesus in the days to come help me slow down to see you. To see your redeeming and restoring love in the midst of the bright and dark places around me. Help me to believe you are in the places and lives already where you are. Let me trust that I can give away some of the grace you’ve lavished upon me so that my eyes can adjust to new light. To help me learn to see.

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