How to See

Yesterday was my 65th birthday. I had to take my own birthday picture as I am in isolation awaiting results of a COVID test. I wore the mask to remind myself in coming years why I took my own picture on my biggest birthday since birth. 

I am standing in my bedroom in my exercise area , a place very familiar to me, but until this picture, I had not really seen it, if you know what I mean. When you take a picture into a mirror, you see both what is ahead and behind you at the same time. Quite a different perspective.

When I woke up this morning, one day into the final lap of my life, I had that same sensation of suddenly being able to see, both what was behind me and ahead of me, at the same time. I lay in bad longer than usual trying to grasp this different perspective, but gave it up when I remembered I have leftover birthday bagels and cream cheese this morning for breakfast.

Coffee and food helped. 

Sitting in my thinking chair, I now have a thought on the change of perspective that happened to my life yesterday. Until 65, none of my birthdays were hard, the way you sometimes hear people say they dreaded turning 40 or 50, you know, black balloon birthdays. I had no black balloon birthdays. Every year I was excited to be one year older, closer to  FINALLY being the adult I knew I should be by now, but wasn't yet.  

Last week, 65 threatened to be a black balloon day. I wrote yesterday in my journal, "Actually, today is not hard. Last week was hard. Last week I was hyper-aware that, although I am still working, I have entered my post-employment years, and I haven't accomplished anything I dreamed of doing when I was 17."

The young dream by seeing forward. The old dream by seeing backwards. I woke this morning seeing both directions at the same time.  While it was off-putting at first, the more I leaned into the experience and allowed myself to dream both ways, the more excited I got about what I was seeing.

It was a vision of how to see.

Friends, we have 80 years to learn to walk by faith and not by sight. While some have fewer years and some a few more than 80, the goal for the human race is to encounter God from hidden clues instead of direct encounter by way of our senses. 

At physical death we become fully sighted. The physical world and the veiled world, we intuitively know is there but cannot see, both pop into view.  The account of Stephen's death in Acts 8 gives us a glimpse of this phenomenon in action. 

We who have been trained to walk by faith and not by sight have learned to sense both worlds before we die. The better we get at it, the more excited we get as we see our final day approaching. Paul gives us a glimpse of this phenomenon of this pre-death excitement in Philippians 1:23.  

This morning I have a sense of that excitement. 

Looking both directions in the mirror of life, I see a truth. God is more interested in who we are than what we do, because what we do springs from who we are. Being comes before doing. That's the trick. That's how to see both directions at once.

Be like Christ, and you will do Christlike things. The being comes before the doing. We learn to see via the exercise of walking by faith and not sight.

Attitude over action.

Caring over critiquing.

Handshakes over handclaps or handouts.

Patience over prudence. We have 80 years to learn this skill of walking by faith and not sight. Patience over prudence is a tough one, isn't it. Especially to us who are so polarized in our day over the most prudent course of action during a pandemic. We lose our patience with one another over the definition of prudence. Which is a shame, because patience has the power to overcome mistakes.

When we walk by faith and not by sight, we realize that today's attitudes are building tomorrow's world. In 50 years, our progeny will not remember the issues over which we built their world, but they will feel the effect of our attitudes toward one another. Will they live in a kinder, gentler world? We have a role to play in that answer.

Today is the first day of the final leg in my journey to discover how to walk by faith and not sight before I die. As such, I want to spend my remaining years building today's world into a culture that will work nicely for tomorrow's children. In my mirror, I see a path toward that better world. Being over doing.  I want to be someone who does things that are derived from attitudes that spring from the heart of God. I want to see.

You too?