I love Kristin (that’s not to say I don’t love my other siblings, I’m just about to use her as an example).

I love the fact that she posted this article to my facebook wall late a couple of nights ago, because she knows that a big part of who I am needs to have compassion for those who’ve done the unthinkable. I also love that she was waiting for me last night after work to show me a song that she knew I would love by an artist she also knew I would love (I’m going to include the lyrics to the song at the end of this post and I encourage you to listen from the link about and read the words, they are beautiful).

I am fortunate in having people around me who know me. Who see me.

I’ve been learning lately how important it is to know that I am seen by God. Not just in that “God sees everything” kind of way that most Christians acknowledge, not in a God sees what I’m doing kind of way either, but realizing that God sees me. 

He sees who I am because he created who I am.

Who I am doesn’t always emerge in the best way, or the most right way, certainly not in a perfect way, but that’s ok because God knows who I am.

I don’t have to hide myself from Him.

Not any part of myself.

And the less I attempt to hide myself, the less I allow guilt over my sin to cause me to distance myself from God, the better I see how unchanging and how deep God’s love for me is.

The knowledge that we are seen and that we are loved is powerful. It impacts how we respond to the rest of the world. It influences our choices and our relationships. Jesus was a man who saw people. It’s why his disciples moved when he said, “Follow me” because a part of their encounter with him had to do with being seen for who they really were, and not being seen through to just what they did. Jesus didn’t see fishermen or tax collectors, he saw people and loved them.

As Christians, how often do we look through the people around us straight to what they do, or what they are aligned with, what causes they support or don’t, what political party they are affiliated with or aren’t, the crimes they have committed, the laws they have broken, the damage they have caused?

I saw an older episode of Grey’s Anatomy recently in which there was a shooter in the hospital, there’s a scene where the shooter has his gun pointed at one character and she starts rattling off to him every bit of personal information about herself that she can think of in the moment. Her name, the names of her parents and siblings, where she grew up, what her parents did for a living, where she went to school, her friends… on and on until he tells her to run instead of shooting her. Later she explains that she’d seen somewhere that in that kind of situation giving personal information about yourself will humanize you and make you harder to kill.

Sometimes I feel like Christians behave in the world the way the man with the gun behaved in the hospital. We go through life and we don’t see people, we see problems that need to be eliminated. We see everything we disagree with, everything that doesn’t live up to our “good Christian values”, but we don’t see the actual person or people who is there in front of us.

It’s no wonder people don’t like us, we make them feel invisible.

I don’t have all the answers for how to solve this problem, but I think it would at least help, if we all took a little more time to try to see into people, instead of through them.

Let’s remember Ephesians 6:12

For our struggle is not against human opponents, but against rulers, authorities, cosmic powers in the darkness around us, and evil spiritual forces in the heavenly realm.

Bad Blood lyrics

you fixed your eyes on us,
your flesh and blood,
a sculpture of water
and unsettled dust.

when there was bad blood in us,
we learned our lesson:
genesis to the last generation.

so we wrestle with it all-
the concept of grace
and the faithful concrete
as it breaks our fall.

our questions are all the same.
identical words; how they feel brand new against different time frames.
identical words against different time frames.

we know it all by heart-
the whole is greater
than the sum of its parts.

we’ve heard it all before-
in beauty there echoes a speck of our source.
in beauty there echoes a speck of our source.

like firewood,
burning bright
in the dead of winter,
by only a flicker
we cling to this life.

so we huddle over maps;
is it faith or prediction,
will or tradition
until we collapse?
we argue our bearings
until we collapse.

we study our story arcs-
inherently good,
or were we broken right from the start?

our hesitant fingerprints
trace every mountain,
lace every valley
until we’re convinced…

that we know it all by heart-
every blade of grass
bears our mark.

in the name of being brave,
though it’s just another word for being afraid.

we know it all by heart-
the whole is so much greater
than the sum of these parts.
we’ve heard the truth before,
for in beauty there echoes a speck of our source.
in beauty there echoes a speck of our source.
in beauty there echoes a speck of our source.