Hello, friends. Val here.
I am so grateful to have you all in my life! Thank you for love and encouragement and like-mindedness to journey together in these times. What I have to share today is a little long but rather than supply links for you to follow, I thought I would just include it all. This poem/prayer came to me very quickly in the early hours this morning. I was then led to the other two readings, which I think contain the spirit of what struck me most, about seeing God in our neighbor’s eyes.
May a mask of peace settle over the land
A touch from Your mighty hand
Oh Lord, we pray for Your fresh anointing today
A flush of joy bestills my soul
Oh, we gather now
The mountains gather now
The fences gather now
The flocks and herds gather now
Under Your hand, our blessed land
A gift from You laid once, and yet again, we pray
Oh Lord, our God, walk Your land
Pass Your hand upon this place
That we might look upon Your face
Yet in our neighbor’s eye.
A fellowship, camaraderie, one nation under God!
Amen, Lord Jesus.
Secondly, Isaiah 58, NASB:
58 “Cry loudly, do not hold back;
Raise your voice like a trumpet,
And declare to My people their wrongdoing,
And to the house of Jacob their sins.
2 Yet they seek Me day by day and delight to know My ways,
As a nation that has done righteousness
And has not forsaken the ordinance of their God.
They ask Me for just decisions,
They delight in the nearness of God.
3 ‘Why have we fasted and You do not see?
Why have we humbled ourselves and You do not [a]notice?’
Behold, on the day of your fast you find your desire,
And oppress all your workers.
4 Behold, you fast for contention and strife, and to strike with a wicked fist.
You do not fast like you have done today to make your voice heard on high!
5 Is it a fast like this that I choose, a day for a person to humble himself?
Is it for bowing [b]one’s head like a reed
And for spreading out sackcloth and ashes as a bed?
Will you call this a fast, even an acceptable day to the Lord?
6 Is this not the fast that I choose:
To release the bonds of wickedness,
To undo the ropes of the yoke,
And to let the oppressed go free,
And break every yoke?
7 Is it not to break your bread [c]with the hungry
And bring the homeless poor into the house;
When you see the naked, to cover him;
And not to hide yourself from your own flesh?
8 Then your light will break out like the dawn,
And your recovery will spring up quickly;
And your righteousness will go before you;
The glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.
9 Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;
You will cry for help, and He will say, ‘Here I am.’
If you remove the yoke from your midst,
The [d]pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness,
10 And if you offer yourself to the hungry
And satisfy the [e]need of the afflicted,
Then your light will rise in darkness,
And your gloom will become like midday.
11 And the Lord will continually guide you,
And satisfy your [f]desire in scorched places,
And give strength to your bones;
And you will be like a watered garden,
And like a spring of water whose waters do not [g]fail.
12 Those from among you will rebuild the ancient ruins;
You will raise up the age-old foundations;
And you will be called the repairer of the breach,
The restorer of the [h]streets in which to dwell.
Keeping the Sabbath
13 “If, because of the Sabbath, you restrain your foot
From doing as you wish on My holy day,
And call the Sabbath a pleasure, and the holy day of the Lord honorable,
And honor it, desisting from your own ways,
From seeking your own pleasure
And speaking your own word,
14 Then you will take delight in the Lord,
And I will make you ride on the heights of the earth;
And I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father,
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
And lastly, I wanted to share this message written 2 years ago by a lady named Kathie Filby:
“It’s a Wednesday morning in November 2018, and I’m standing in the front row of chapel at Greenville University. The worship team begins to sing, “Open the eyes of my heart, Lord. Open the eyes of my heart. I want to see You.”
Ironically, I close my eyes while fervently asking the Lord to reveal Himself to me. Admittedly, there are mornings where I am not so sincere while offering up my worship to the Lord in song. However, this morning I really mean it. I want to see Him: the King of Kings, the Lord Almighty, the Righteous One, the Great I Am. Then we repeat the refrain: “Open the eyes of my heart. I want to see you.”
And then the strangest thing happens. Somewhere from deep within me, I hear a voice telling me to open my eyes and if I do that, then I will see Him!
I opened my eyes, knowing that my view would consist of mainly 18- to 22-year-olds, many from southern Illinois, some from East St. Louis, and others from California, Arizona, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Vietnam, Ecuador, China, Venezuela, Croatia, Ghana and many other places that I have probably never visited. Many of these students are Christians, but not all. Many of them were worshipping there with me, but not all. I imagine that some were probably trying to complete a homework assignment; others were probably checking Facebook or Instagram. Yet it seemed that God was telling me that if I wanted to see His face, then I needed to open my eyes and look at their faces.
A long time ago, I came to understand that I have been created in the image of God. This revelation brought so much freedom and a true sense of my identity in Christ. It is so wonderful to know that I have been adopted into the family of our good, good Father and that there is nothing I could possibly do to make Him love me more. This revelation changed me and how I saw myself. However, seeing others in the image of God doesn’t just change me; it changes everything. The sometimes hard-to-swallow truth is that every person – every person – bears the image of God. This includes those who look like me and those who don’t, those who talk like me and those who don’t, those who live like me and those who don’t.
Genesis 1:27 clearly tells us that “God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”
In other words, there has never been anyone born who was not created by God in the image of God. Indeed, there are many people who are obviously His image-bearers. I can think of some of my own mentors, pastors, and so forth. It doesn’t take a lot of faith, on my part, to see them as carrying the presence of God and bearing His image. But how can it be that every single person is created in His image?
When the psalmist declared, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:13–14a), he was not only speaking about himself but about all of mankind — every single one of us.
The challenge, of course, is that there are many who are “alienated from God and [are] enemies in [their] minds because of [their] evil behavior,” as Paul puts it in Colossians 1:21. Yet this does not negate the fact that they – like you and me – were created in God’s image! I also was alienated from God, living for myself. Yet thankfully, according to Paul, there is a “But now” — “But now” I have been reconciled to God (v.22).
In one of Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, he goes on to say that we now have been given the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:18). As image-bearers of God who have been reconciled, our task is now to bring the good news, the hope of the gospel, to those image-bearers who remain alienated from Christ. If we see them merely as sinners, then chances are that we will simply judge them rather than reach out to them in love. And if we truly understand the Scriptures, we must be able to see Christ in each one of them. Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts it like this: “As long as there are people, Christ will walk the earth as your neighbor, as the one through whom God calls you, speaks to you, makes demands on you” (fmchr.ch/dbonhoeffer).
James reminds us that: “With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness” (James 3:9). So how can we bless, rather than curse, those image-bearers who don’t yet know this great God of unconditional love and mercy? Here are a few suggestions:
By giving dignity to the elderly, to widows and orphans, thus honoring the image of God in them; by rescuing those who have been trafficked, demonstrating our belief that they are fearfully and wonderfully made; by working toward racial unity and reconciliation, concurring there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free because we are all one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28); by offering hospitality to the stranger, the immigrant and the refugee, ministering to their needs as if ministering to Christ himself (Matthew 25:31-46); or on a smaller scale, by smiling at the person next to you at the checkout, or by inviting that lonely student or neighbor for Sunday lunch.
All of this makes me wonder how our community might change if we truly believed that everyone was created in the image of God. C.S. Lewis wrote, “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit” (fmchr.ch/cslewis). In other words, next to God, people are the holiest beings on earth simply because they have been created in the image of God.
By the time I had sung “open the eyes of my heart” for the third or fourth time on that Wednesday morning in chapel, I started to understand more clearly the truth expressed by Jean Valjean in the musical “Les Misérables”: “To love another person is to see the face of God.” Seeing the face of God in those around you will not just change you, but rather it will change everything.
“Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40). ” (2 years ago written by Kathie Filby)
Be of good cheer, take heart, for He has overcome this world!! (John 16:33)
Val
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