The Seeing Eye

 “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light.  But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”  Matt 6:22-23

I once had a man compare believing in God to believing in unicorns or a spaghetti monster.  His augment is that he never saw a unicorn, so he does not believe in them, and because he has not seen God he could not believe in Him.

It is not uncommon for people to say they cannot believe in God because they cannot see Him.  However, it seems to me that humans believe in a lot of things they cannot see.  In fact, some of the most important things in life are things we cannot see such as love, joy, and hope. Yet, we believe in them and we believe they are real.  We believe in the wind and the force we call gravity, and yet we do not see them.  All we see and feel are the effects of them.  We believe we see light but do we?  In essence, we believe in these things not because we see them but rather because we experience them.

The truth is that sometimes we must believe in order to see. For example, if scientists did not believe in atoms, they would never have found them. There were natural philosophers (scientists) that believed in atoms 2500 years ago. They had no way to see them, but they had a hunch they existed and they began a long search to prove their hunch.   Even to this day, no one has actually seen an atom, all we can see is a trail of one or a computerized image of one, yet we believe they exist. In like manner, if scientists did not believe that there was life at the bottom of the sea, they would not have found the incredible life forms that they have found recently. They actually found creatures that are more unbelievable than unicorns.

If humans believed in only what they could or have seen they would believe very little.  The truth is we believe as much in what we have experienced as what we have seen.  Things like love, joy, and hope are not seen but most of us have experienced them to some degree. Of course, sadly, there are some who have not experienced these things.  However, their lack of experiencing these things does not prove they do not exist.  We could say that experiencing something is just another way of seeing or knowing. In spiritual matters, we call this the Seeing Eye, “blessed are the poor in spirit for they will see God.”

Spiritually minded people often speak of their experience with God. In the Bible, men speak of having visions, dreams or hearing a quiet voice. I do not think the majority of us will experience God this way or have a burning bush experience like Moses, but I do believe we all experience God to some degree though we often fail to recognize it.  We need the Seeing Eye and the hearing ear of faith.

We all may not hear the voice of God directly, but all can hear the echo of his voice when we sense that we were created for the stars and in our longing to explore.  We hear it in our love for life and our disdain for death.  We hear it in the universal need for meaning and self-esteem.  We hear it in the human cry for justice. We hear it in death as well as life. In death, we hear the voice tell us that we are not God. In life we hear it say that life is moving to completeness.

If you are seeking God, go to a quiet place and drop all your worldly beliefs.  Remember, it is these beliefs that keep you from seeing. Truth is often found through subtraction not addition.  Then think of your life and see if you can see God at work in it and in the lives of those around you.  Ask God to open the eyes of your heart that you might see Him and hear His voice.  Jesus promised that those that keep asking and seeking would find.