“The true voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes
Marcel Proust
but in having new eyes.”
I read the news today. I read scripture. I listened to a video a family member sent me. I spent a few minutes on Twitter where 140-character thoughts abound. I agreed with much that I read, but the parts with which I disagreed stymy me. How do others find agreement in those things?
I’m reminded that point of view is the result of sight — limited by the viewfinder through which we live our life. I want to understand better what shapes my perspective.
As we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
2 Corinthians 4:18
I’m grateful for sight — for the ability to distinguish between shades of color — and the ability to appreciate the varying tones. Is that not how seeing through the lens of our own experiences is? But how do we interpret what we see with the eyes of experience? Are those the same as the eyes of faith?
“I doubt if there’s any such thing as total objectivity. We listen out of our own skins, our own ears, see through our own eyes with their various myopias and astigmatisms.” She told an interviewer, “I have a point of view. You have a point of view. But God has view.”
Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water
I love that phrase – “BUT God has view!” God’s view is not limited by a human viewfinder, by the human experience. Instead He sees the end from the beginning, through the lens of His purposes, His design.
Man’s walled mind has no access to a ladder upon which he can,
Abraham Joshua Heschel
of his own strength, rise to knowledge of God.
Yet his soul is endowed with translucent windows that open to the beyond.
I want to see as God sees — so that my “point of view” mirrors his “view.” May my soul be endowed with translucent windows that open to the beyond!
Open my eyes that I may see
Clara H. Scott, 1895
glimpses of truth thou hast for me.
Place in my hands the wonderful key
that shall unclasp and set me free.
Silently now I wait for thee,
ready, my God, thy will to see.
Open my eyes, illumine me,
Spirit divine!
