Seeing the unseen
Philstar carries a Daily Bread section for spiritual reminder and nourishment for interested readers. The March 14th reading focused on the theme, “seeing the unseen.”
When clouds crowd the sky, many of us forget the sun behind the clouds. We see the rains but forget the rainbows, our reminder of our link with God. When problems come, we dwell in the midst of the trials. We forget to go beyond the challenges, we forget to explore possibilities and solutions. We merely see our miserable selves. We do not see God.
In the context of Holy Week, Sr. Tess Laguna of Colegio de la Inmaculada Concepcion in Mandaue, who celebrated her Silver Jubilee March 14th, reminds us not to focus only on the cross, but on the Resurrection!
Focusing on the cross alone causes us to be bogged down by the weight of the cross. Focusing on the meaning of the cross, as Jesus Christ did, made the cross bearable to carry, made the Cross a joy to carry as the cross symbolized redemption of all because of love: God the Father’s love for us all and His Son’s love for God the Father and for us all.
If there are those of us now with crosses to carry, with trials and challenges, we can choose to be burdened by the cross, to be crushed by the trials and challenges. Or we can learn from what the Daily Bread proposed, to see with the eyes of faith.
Our burdens are carriers of God’s graces. Can you imagine how different problems will become if we look at these with the eyes of faith?
Challenges and trials can be viewed as God-sent. These are opportunities for all to go beyond the challenges, to acknowledge one’s dependence on God for surmounting these challenges, to see God closer to us more than ever.
Tending to focus merely on the worries and the fears take us all away for the “unseen elements,” the spiritual graces that accompany what we see with our visible eyes but what are hidden because we fail to use our eyes of faith.”
As the March 14th Daily Bread reading wrote, with eyes of faith, we enter into “the invisible, spiritual realm of God,” then, “the better we will see the visible world for what it really is.”
Hence it is essential, according to this reading, “to maintain a proper perspective of this visible world. It will also keep us from being too focused on all the stuff it has to offer.”
Taking on God’s perspective takes us beyond the unpleasantries, beyond the stressful disservice and abuse heaped on our people, on us, by those bound by God and law to provide public service but don’t.
For sure, each day brings you to an imperfect world, to imperfect people, ourselves included among the imperfects. Eyes of faith, however, allow us to see the painful day as merely a dot in the time frame of the Lord, that the Lord will bring and has surely provided for the sun to come at His own time, in His own way to overcome the clouds, the storms in our daily lives. In The Little Prince, we are made aware that “what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
Today’s Daily Bread reading reminds us that we can see the unseen if we take on God’s eyes, if we take on the eyes of faith and love.
Sadly, there are many who do not see even what is visible to the eyes. For example, surely, the presence of millions of our poor, the dirt, the damaged roads, the disservice, the abuse, the corruption in our midst are starkingly visible to everyone’s eyes?
For this Lent, let us ask the Lord to allow the unseeing to see the visible. Let us also invoke the Lord, like Dave Egner, to show us “those invisible things we need to see and know which are so much more important than the things we can see.” Let us also ask the Lord as Fitzhugh wrote, to “help us see what cannot be seen with only the naked eye, to let us look with the eyes of the heart, to riches beyond the sky.”
‘For this Lent, let us ask the Lord to allow the unseeing to see the visible.’