Brace yourselves!

Brace yourselves! Hurricane’s coming...

I peer from the windows on a shrinking landscape, swaddled in deep mist. Autumn trees flare into the thickening grey. Larch twigs droop, waving limply in the breath of wind, which is forecast to increase to gale force and possibly even hurricane strength before the day is through. The outlook is bleak and the light appears to waver.

Brexit; Trump; North Korea; Iran; Syria; Ukraine; Myanmar; Venezuela. Wildfires; hurricanes; floods; earthquakes; drought. 

I peer at a global landscape, swaddled in deep mist. Truth flares into the thickening darkness of fake news and alternative facts. Hope swirls forlornly in the tornadoes of doubt and confusion. 

Through it all, though, shines a beacon of light, the light of the world, burning brighter as the darkness deepens. I lift my eyes to the hills, (which at the moment, I cannot see, so lost are they in the mist).Where is the help we need?

Our help remains in the name of the Lord who has made heaven and earth. It’s time to see with the inner eye, through Holy Spirit specs, and focus on Jesus. 

Brace yourselves!

Distorted perception

Carnivals and fun fairs used to (and maybe still do) always have a hall of mirrors. We used to enjoy walking through and seeing our weird transformations as the wiggly mirrors reflected  distorted images of us, either with short legs or elongated heads or stretched bodies, both horizontal and vertical. We laughed because we knew that wasn’t an accurate reflection of how we looked.

It’s easy to see images of other people which are inaccurate and untrue. Someone does something and we assume we know the reasons why, and we begin to see them in a new light. Someone fails to meet our expectations and we jump to judge them, drawing conclusions from a point of ignorance. 

Paul writes to the Corinthians that now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror – or as the King James version reads, now we see through a glass darkly. We look at Jesus and we jump to conclusions, thinking we see him clearly. We can only see him clearly, though, through ‘Holy Spirit specs’. It takes time, focus, and love. 

Love? Yes, because I think the clearest picture we will have of Jesus is through the eyes of our heart, through the lens of love. Our minds, as transformed and renewed as we hope they will become, may still fail to grasp the length and breadth and height and depth of God’s love for us. But our hearts thrill to its truth.