Abre Los Ojos
Abre los ojos.
Open your eyes.
These are the opening lines of Disney’s latest animated movie, Encanto—an enchanting story that is 100% fun, 70% Family Systems Therapy. I couldn’t recommend it more. Its plot features a young woman who is burdened by her gift of being the only one who can truly see the cracks in her family’s foundation. She lives with her eyes wide open to the world around her, yet she is often subtly punished or ignored by her family members when her observations make them uncomfortable.
I find this metaphor striking, because if I’m honest, seeing clearly can be painful sometimes. It is one thing to behold the beauty and glory and goodness of God in the world around me, but what about the times when what I see is more broken than beautiful? Beholding brokenness can sometimes feel unbearable and overwhelming; it makes me want to close my eyes and just keep my head down, glancing at the world in small, manageable doses.
This past Sunday, I got a chance to open my eyes—to look again when I had first decided to look away.
It was a cold and foggy morning. I was driving us to church while Drew made some last-minute revisions to his sermon. On Sunday mornings, I am focused on one thing only: get us to church in a timely, peaceable fashion. Typically, my gaze is fixed directly ahead of me, my firmly gripped at 10 and 2 on the wheel. I am not looking around because it is ‘game time’ and I am mentally preparing myself to engage with God and others in the full morning ahead.
The sidewalks of our town are often frequented by people who live without homes. While there are certainly times I engage and help such persons, I find it depressing while driving to fully take in all the people around me with signs, dirty hands and clothes, and downcast eyes.
So I look away.
But this morning—the one morning of the week on which my ‘fix my gaze directly ahead of me’ resolve is strong—I met God in a different way than I usually do. As we pulled up to the first light out of our neighborhood, I noticed someone out of the corner of my eye, discerned that he was homeless, and quickly averted my eyes. He was too close to our car for comfort; I already felt hopeless after the brief glance I gave him.
But softly and gently, I sensed the Spirit inviting me to look at him anyways.
“Look again.”
Abre los ojos.
So I did. Slowly turning my head, I saw a young man with dark, greasy hair sitting forlornly on a pile of river rocks next to the Burger King parking lot. He was absentmindedly stacking stones on his lap and holding a long evergreen branch in his hand. I didn’t really know what to do with that visual information, but I did know that something inside me had shifted ever-so-slightly towards compassion. When the light turned green, I drove away, holding the image of the young man with the stones and the branch in my mind.
As I’ve thought about it since, I realized that obeying the Spirit’s prompt to open my eyes to truly see him was an act of trust and transformation. It required both that I entrust his wellbeing to God, and also that I trust God to care for my heart even when all looks hopeless. Looking at him transformed my heart of stone to a heart of flesh because as I looked, I began to see him as God sees him: Beloved son. Beautiful. Worthy.
Did my looking at him with compassion change his life in any way?
Probably not.
But did something of the kingdom of God take place that morning at the intersection of Burger King and Auburn Way South?
Yes.
Because the love I experienced when I looked at him was not something I could have ever worked up on my own. The opening line from the ancient Gregorian Chant Ubi Caritas says it best:
Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est.
Where charity and love are, God is there.
Sometimes it’s easier to not look. Life is hard, people are hurting, and even if we are not, seeing someone who is suffering reminds us that it could just as easily happen to us. For me, the failure to truly look at someone is a failure of faith. When I avoid looking at someone to spare myself from acknowledging their painful reality, I reinforce the lie that it is up to me to help them because God must be busy somewhere else. So much of our culture is tailored towards distraction, perfectly engineered to turn our attention away from what is most needed towards what is most profitable.
Perhaps this is true poverty: to sleepwalk through this life with our eyes wide shut, little guessing what we miss by choosing our own comfort.
If we are truly to welcome each other as family into the kingdom of God, we must allow ourselves to truly see the brokenness around us and within us—and not only to see, but to allow the Holy Spirit to shape our hearts in a posture of trust that the healer of brokenness is forever among us, mighty to save.
For the Lord your God is living among you.
He is a mighty savior.
He will take delight in you with gladness.
With his love, he will calm all your fears.
He will rejoice over you with joyful songs.(Zephaniah 3:17)
What if all God asks of us is to simply look at the people around us with the love he provides?
When we let God’s love do the heavy lifting, we are freed from our self-agendas to enter fully into each and every eternal moment we are given in this brief lifetime.
When Love is in our midst, we do not have to fear what we see.
Abre los ojos.
A prayer for seeing:
Oh God,
We are tired.
Sometimes it hurts to see all the ways this world is not as it should be.
Help us to live with our eyes open to your presence in the world, trusting that you meant it when you promised, “I am making all things new.”
Amen.