Sometimes it is hard for me to see this God reality… especially when I am keenly aware of the war and violence that is currently happening in Egypt. Or, when I am aware of the suffering and unexplained tragedies and illnesses that my church community experiences. Violence, crime, murder is very present in my living room when I watch the morning news… I do wonder, where is this God reality? How can I see? Sometimes it is not as tragic as that… sometimes it is as simple as my own self-consciousness and inhibitions that keep me from seeing the God sightings.
And yet, God is patient with me. He leaves me little signs… hints of his presence all around.
Blogging about Elisha’s prayer to see beyond the present circumstances into the reality of God’s presence kind of stayed with me the rest of the day. Shortly after posting that entry, I had lunch with a group of some of our church members who live in a retirement community. We reminisced about a lot of things. How we have experienced God’s presence when we can’t sleep, ways that we can be more playful, change… especially changes that involve the telephone and technology and change that involves their bodies… some good changes and some hard changes. We acknowledged that sometimes it is hard to look beyond our circumstances to see how God is in that too.
One of the group members who is currently under hospice care and is thinking about the changes she is experiencing spoke up, “It is hard for me to think about the future… when I close my eyes… I don’t see anything.” A moment of sacred silence slipped by and there I was with Elisha’s prayer. I told her that I would pray Elisha’s prayer for her, that God would open her eyes to see the spiritual places beyond her circumstances… just as he had done for Jacob and the ladder from heaven in an ordinary field… just as he had done for Elisha’s servant who even though he was surrounded by an army and possible death, God opened his eyes to see the heavenly chariots of fire that were present as well. Our eyes met for a second… and I knew by the softening in her eyes that it is was a good thing to pray for… A quiet nod of acceptance. It is hard sometimes to see the heavenly in our all too real earthly bodies… this is a thing that only God can do.
“O God, quicken to life every power within me, that I may lay hold on eternal things. Open my eyes that I may see; give me acute spiritual perception; enable me to taste Thee and know that Thou art good. Make heaven more real to me than any earthly thing has ever been. Amen” A.W. Tozer -The Pursuit of God