Just a thought experiment. Imagine you got all the people you know in a room (it’s a big room) and divided them in half according to how happy they are. More happy people over on the right, less happy people on the left. What makes them different?
So for example, would you look at the dividing line and realize that all the people on the left had faced more hardship and challenge than all the people on the right? Is that what makes them different? Would the happier half be the half who hadn’t seen as much suffering? If you start thinking through the people you know, I think you’ll find that isn’t the case at all.
What makes people happy is obviously a fairly ambitious question; so let me get straight to the rather simple point I’m trying to make here. If you did our little experiment in your head, would it be true to say that the happier half of people tend to look at things differently than the less happy half? You bet.
If your friend told you “I’m so unhappy; I think I’d better get a nicer truck,” you’d think “buddy, you’re barking up the wrong tree there.” If your friend said “I’m unhappy; I think I need to improve my husband’s or wife’s personality,” you’d think “right, good luck.” But if he said “I’m not happy, I think I need to change the way I look at things,” you might think he was on to something. He’s on the right track.
When the Prophet Samuel is sent to pick out Israel’s next king from among the sons of Jesse, his mission is to recognize God’s choice, which means seeing things the way God sees them. Notice how Samuel rejects the standards that the world might be tempted to use. God tells him “take no notice of appearance or height.” That might sound kind of basic, but don’t get smug too fast and claim you never, ever react differently to people according to their appearance. Almost all of us, in some ways at some times, do exactly that. God never does. God tells Samuel, “man looks at appearances but the Lord looks at the heart.” One by one Samuel goes through Jesse’s sons (I hope none of them had rejection issues) and finally says “nope, anyone else?” Notice the boldness here. Samuel seems to have no reason to think these aren’t all the boys; it’s bold of him to decline all the options on offer and say “no, we have to keep looking.” In other words, he declines to ‘settle.’ There’s a time for ‘settling’, but Sammy knows this isn’t it.
Because Samuel is able to see things the way God sees them, Israel gets its greatest King and the whole people’s history is changed forever. There’s a lot in life you aren’t in control of and there are a lot of things you can’t change. But you absolutely do have a choice about how you see things, how you look at the world… and that’s a destiny-making choice.
Chesterton made the point well when he wrote that “and adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered.” Rightly considered, mind you! We’re not talking about fancifully pretending that things are other than they are. We’re not talking about Pollyannish delusions. We’re talking about simple accuracy. It’s the pessimist, the curmudgeon, the sourpuss who is deluded. It’s jaded, ironic cynic who’s pretending things are other than they are. And it’s the little kid who greets every sunrise as a new adventure in a world full of fairy enchantment who has the clearest vision. When my niece gets super-excited about a muddy puddle, I don’t smile because she’s delightfully wrong about puddles. I smile because she’s exactly right, and because somehow I’d forgotten how great puddles are. Sadly, our vision gets worse with age.
But in the Gospels we meet a man who can heal our vision. We meet a man who see things as God sees them because he sees, quite simply and literally, with God’s eyes. He sees the heart of things, and the hearts of people. That’s the Good News today: Jesus can heal our sight.
Lord, open my eyes. Help me to see. Help me to see the wonder and beauty of life. Help me to see the meaning in my suffering. Most of all, Lord, help me to see your face in others.
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