Thursday, September 18, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Whose eyes?
Life becomes an unbearable burden whenever we lose touch with the presence of a loving Savior and see only hunger to be alleviated, injustice to be addressed, violence to overcome, wars to be stopped, and loneliness to be removed. All these are critical issues and Christians must try to solve them; however, when our concern no longer flows from our personal encounter with the living Christ, we feel an oppressive weight.
Here arises a key question: “Can we see Christ in the world?” The answer is, “No, we cannot see Christ in the world, but only the Christ in us can see Christ in the world.” This means that through prayer the Christ within us opens our eyes to the Christ among us. – Henri Nouwen
I tend to see the world through my own experience, so when I suffer the world seems to suffer, and when I rejoice the world rejoices. But I know this egocentrism is dangerous, because it prevents me from being WITH others in mind and body unless we happen to be on the same team, win the same game.
Nouwen’s shift from my own eyes to the eyes of Jesus might be philosophical and metaphysical, but it’s practical too. I want to make that shift quickly and easily when it’s called for. Compassion for anyone outside my own small circle requires it. “Only the Christ in us can see Christ in the world.” Jesus’ personal presence in my personal life opens me to serve and love our neighbors who walk their dogs every day, and the drivers who drive faster than me on Austin expressways, and to the many Texans who have different opinions about our federal government.
And so on.
Let no one have contempt for your youth,
but set an example for those who believe,
in speech, conduct, love, faith, and purity.
After I left high school for Valpo I chose to be politically active and on weekends traveled to Milwaukee to knock on doors in support of Senator Eugene McCarthy in the Wisconsin primary. A few months later in Chicago my friend Larry and I carried protest signs as the 1968 Democratic National Convention nominated Hubert Humphrey for president, not my personal poet-hero.
Over the next few years I turned away from politics toward psychology and then physical activity, looking for fulfillment as a white male human. My identity had been grounded in the Lutheran church, and although that seemed less than relevant for a decade or so, spiritual seeds were sown in my childhood that eventually broke through the hard ground and began to grow.
Do not neglect the gift you have.
Be diligent in these matters, be absorbed in them,
so that your progress may be evident to everyone.
Attend to yourself and to your teaching;
persevere in both tasks.
On the streets of downtown Chicago our car radio pounded out “People Got to Be Free.” The music pulsated with a demand that surged in me. In those days “the Christ in me could see Christ in the world.” Our Vineyard friend Bill Jackson wrote NothinsGonnaStopIt!: The Storyline of the Bible, a fast-paced overview of one biblical person after another “seeing Christ in the world” and doing something about it.
What a feelin’s just come over me
Love can move a mountain, make a blind man see
Everybody sing it now come on let’s go see
Peace in the valley, we all can be free
See that train over there?
Now that’s the train of freedom …
Classic political thought insists that conservatives most value freedom and liberals value equality. Both freedom and equality require definition, and the struggle between them can as Nouwen wrote, “become an unbearable burden” when I lose sight of seeing through Jesus’ eyes what he sees everywhere he looks – one person after another who is hungry, broken, lonely and eventually, entirely without hope. We all fall short of the glory of God.
Come to me all of you, who labor and are heavy-laden,
And I will give you rest.
Fifty-five plus years after the Chicago marches, my back hurts when I walk very far. In Chicago we attended a class on how to walk long distances efficiently, allowing our feet to carry our legs forward without straining, using our leg muscles only to swing along, step by step. Less makes more. This happens when within us, the Christ we have invited in sees Christ in the world. In this way all things are possible.
Your faith has saved you; go in peace.
 (1 Timothy 4, Psalm 111, Matthew 11, Luke 7)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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