Eyes to See

 

I have a confession.  It’s been days since my last post, and the reason is that I have spent these days binge-watching Poldark.  

When I say “binge-watch,” I wish I meant something only slightly off-balance and mostly self-controlled, like a responsible adult would mean.  I don’t. 

I neglected basic household chores.  I reduced my mothering objectives from “teach them books of the Bible” to “keep them alive.”  I cooked only once, and even then it was a shepherd’s pie to enjoy while in 1790’s Cornwall.  And, as embarrassing as this is to admit, I became so obsessed that I consumed the first three seasons in not many more days.  Then, when I ran out of episodes but my heart was still in England, I started Downton Abbey again from the beginning.  It’s how I’ve been easing back to normal.     

I got a bit lost; I can’t deny it.  Which reminded me of the Mirror of Erised.  In the movie Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone, Harry found a magical mirror that reflected one’s deepest desire.  When Harry looked into it, he saw his dead parents lovingly beside him, and he began to spend too much time tucked away in front of the mirror.  Finally, Professor Dumbledore intervened and warned Harry: “This mirror gives us neither knowledge nor truth.  Men have wasted away in front of it… It does not do to dwell on dreams, Harry, and forget to live.” 

It is easy for me to wrap myself up in a make-believe world while forgetting my own.  And yet, as I come back to center, God is kind to remind me that there is nothing more powerful than our everyday lives.  No matter how ordinary or insignificant they may seem. 

Many years ago I read and loved a book called Waking the Dead.  The author John Eldredge wrote that the reason we feel connected to great stories is because they all borrow from God’s original Story in which good and evil fight over our hearts.  When we feel moved watching a young Luke train as a Jedi, or watching Arya Stark take up her sword, Eldredge wrote, “deep is calling unto deep”— our spirits are responding to a very real calling as warriors and royal heirs in a global war.  He argued that waking up to this spiritual reality is crucial for us to live our fullest, most glorious lives:  

“Either we wake to tackle our ‘to do’ list, get things done, guided by our morals and whatever clarity we may at the moment have…Or we wake in the midst of a dangerous Story, as God’s intimate ally, following him into the unknown.”

It is very easy to dismiss our small, everyday encounters with each other as inconvenient, rather than as divine appointments.  To consider our chores void of eternal consequence.  To focus so much on our current annoyance, that we lose sight of our true purpose as prayer-warriors, change-bringers, good-news-tellers, encouragers and friends.  

In 2 Kings 6, the prophet Elisha and his servant found themselves surrounded on all sides by a powerful army.  The servant began to panic, and asked Elisha what they should do.  But Elisha told him not to fear.  He said, “For those who are with us are more than those who are with them.”  He then prayed, and asked the Lord to open the servant’s eyes to the unseen.  God answered, and the servant looked around to find the mountain covered in angel armies— horses and chariots of fire— fighting with them.  

As far from everyday life as it may seem, if we truly believe the Bible— if we see the unseen— then we are the Creator’s allies in a daily world war.  There is a very real enemy prowling around to kidnap our children and our loved ones as prisoners-of-war, and there are real angel armies at our side.  There is a great cloud of witnesses seated in the stadium of heaven to watch us run the race, and the game is played for keeps.  

Certainly, we can choose to waste away in fantasies and distractions, or to believe the lie that our own stories aren’t nearly as grand as all that.  Or like King Saul, we can hide ourselves in the supplies closet and pretend we aren’t being tapped to play.  But it doesn’t change the truth that our story— no matter who we are— is better than any story ever told.  Better even than that of Ross Poldark, or the gladiator Maximus.  It is the true one, the one playing out right now, in which we are the protagonists. 

The glory of our lives, and that of our loved ones, hangs in the balance.  There are hostages waiting for us to realize our destinies, and there are plot conflicts waiting for us to resolve them: will forgiveness be extended?  Will the relationship make it?  Will the time be invested?  Will the moment be lost?  And only we decide how it goes.  

I love to picture it.  Me turning down a grocery store aisle only to realize someone I know is at the other end.  Someone from the past, someone who reminds me of things I’d rather forget.  And I look like a mess, and this isn’t good timing, and so I have every inclination to cast my eyes down and turn around.  But wait.  What if this was all arranged?  What if I am here, now, for such a time as this?  What if it has nothing to do with me, and everything to do with God?  What if I set down my vanity or insecurity, and took up His banner and His war cry?  And then as I think it, a great crowd draws and holds its breath, and an archangel beside me steadies his horse and waits for my command.  Nana, my grandmother, seated somewhere in the stands, leans forward a bit in her chair and studies my face, and then, as I take a step forward her eyes squint into a warm smile.  My grandfather whom I never met reaches over and squeezes her hand, and as I walk toward the person at the other end of the aisle, the horse beside me keeps my pace and his rider draws his sword.  

And the crowd goes wild.