1 Samuel 16:1-13 …the LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.
(16:7 NRSV)
“Some nights I’m in the kitchen washing dishes. And Pop’s playing poker with the boys. Well, I’ll watch him real close. And at first I’ll just see an ordinary middle-aged man – not very interesting to look at. And then, minute by minute, I’ll see little things I never saw in him before. Good things and bad things – queer little habits I never noticed he had – and ways of talking I never paid any mind to. And suddenly I know who he is – and I love him so much I could cry! And I want to thank God I took the time to see him real.”
~ N. Richard Nash (playwright), The Rainmaker, quoted
in Creative Brooding, p.115
Psalm 23 Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, for you are with me.... (23:4 NIV)
“And even though our foreheads have been signed with the sign of the cross, we are only human. And most of us are afraid and lonely and would like to hold hands or cry or run away. And we don’t know where we are going, and we can’t seem to trust God – especially when it’s dark out and we can’t see him! And he won’t go on without us...”
~ Martin Bell, “Rag-Tag Army”, The Way of the Wolf: The Gospel in New Images, p. 92
Ephesians 5:8-14 For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light... (5:8 NIV)
“We are God’s images and imagers. We are changed into God’s likeness, transformed into God’s character...Praising and reflecting God is the goal of spiritual life – of human life. Giving God the central place in our lives and in our world. Making space for God who made space for us. As the moon reflects the sun, so the people of God are to reflect God. God is reflected in a people who live and love and laugh and talk and suffer and die in the sunshine of God’s grace.”
~ Don Postema, Space for God, pp.180-181 John 9:1-41 Then Jesus said, ‘My coming into this world is itself a judgment – those who cannot see have their eyes opened and those who think they can see become blind.’
(9:39 JBPhillips)
“A disheartening number of them [the newly sighted] refuse to use their new vision… a twenty-one-year-old girl…‘carefully shuts her eyes whenever she wishes to go about the house…and…is never happier or more at ease than when, by closing her eyelids, she relapses into her former state of total blindness’… Some do learn to see, especially the young ones. But it changes their lives. …a twenty-two-year-old girl was dazzled by the world’s brightness and kept her eyes shut for two weeks. When at the end of that time she opened her eyes again, she did not recognize any objects, but, ‘the more she now directed her gaze upon everything about her, the more it could be seen how an expression of gratification and astonishment overspread her features; she repeatedly exclaimed: “Oh God! How beautiful!”’
~ Annie Dillard, Pilgrim At Tinker Creek, pp.29-31
A Celtic Invocation:
The Guiding Light of Eternity
“O God, who broughtst me from the rest of last night
Unto the joyous light of this day,
Be Thou bringing me from the new light of this day
Unto the guiding light of eternity. Oh! from the new light of this day Unto the guiding light of eternity.”
~ Celtic Invocations: Selections from Volume I of Carmina Gadelica, Alexander Carmichael
