Reforming our vision to see Christ in others--written of in the previous blogpost--is for most of us a practice that takes a great deal of intention. With faithfulness, the practice becomes more natural, instinctual. Take one of my favorite preacher/writers, Frederick Buechner. Listen to how he 'sees into' his congregation and finds there the divine spark in the form of hope. Good inspiration for any of you who face a classroom of kids or adults, pews filled with the faithful, a home with kids.
"I see them sitting here,...a little uncomfortable in their Sunday best with their old faces closed like doors and their young faces blank as clapboard; but deep within those faces--farther down than their daydreams and boredom and way beyond any horizon of their wandering minds that they could describe--there was the hope that somewhere out of all the words and music and silences of this place...a voice that they would know from all other voices would speak their names and bless them."
A Room Called Remember, Harper & Row, 1984, p. 32-33
This is a pastor in whom a new sight has long taken hold, and for whom the gift of 'seeing into' has become natural. Makes me believe there's hope for any of us!
