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Beauty is Hidden
The attitude we have about our life is very important. Depending on what attitude we have, our life will turn out very differently.
St. Paul said,
We walk by faith, not by sight. (2 Corinthians 5:7)
That was his attitude towards his life. Walk by faith, not by sight? What does this mean?
He saw that life is more than what he could see. He discovered that truth about life. Do you live only by what you can see? Or do you recognize that there is something about life that you don’t see?
What excites me about life is not what I see but what I don’t see. We do not necessarily see everything. There are many more things that are hidden in what we do not see. I experience daily that life is bigger than what I can see, touch, and feel. If what I see is everything, it is depressing. What we see is fight, struggles, war, sickness, and death.
With God, I can pursue what is much bigger than what I see. My friends, I believe that LIFE’S SECRET is hidden in what we cannot see. Wonderful TREASURES are hidden in what we cannot see.
That was what St. Paul said.
We look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:18)
Whatever you can see with your eyes is temporary no matter how beautiful it is. What is eternal cannot be seen with your eyes. Bigger things are hidden in what we cannot see. Beautiful things are hidden in what we cannot see.
DEATH is what you can see. But the RESURRECTION is what you cannot see. SUFFERING is what you can see. But the GLORY is what you cannot see. MONEY is what you can see. But HAPPINESS is what you cannot see. Your REALITY is what you can see. But God’s PROMISE is what you cannot see.
If you accept that beautiful things are hidden in what you cannot see, then you realize that you need FAITH. Faith is the only way to deal with what we cannot see.
Comfort With What We Cannot See
This is what the Hebrew writer said,
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1)
Just because you cannot see ANYTHING GOOD happen in your life, don’t get discouraged. Don’t give up.
When we have faith, we can go beyond miseries, suffering, hardships, hopelessness, and even death that we see around us. Faith helps us to move on even when we cannot see good things happening around us.
Even though we do not see the result, we can take a meaningful step with our faith.
Martin Luther King Jr. said,
Faith is taking the first step, even when you don’t see the whole staircase.
That is so true. Faith is taking a meaningful step even though we do not see the whole picture.
With God, we become comfortable with what we cannot see.
Isaiah was speaking to people in exile. Babylon destroyed Israel and took them as captives. Life in Babylon at first was hard and difficult. They lost their temple, their home, and they were taken to a foreign land.
It was like what is happening right now in Ukraine. More than 3 million refugees had to flee from their homeland.
Israelites were taken as captives. They lost everything.
We can see the sentiment of the Israelites in the captivity in Psalm 137.
By the rivers of Babylon—
there we sat down and there we wept
when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there
we hung up our harps.
For there our captors
asked us for songs,
and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying,
‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’
How could we sing the Lord’s song
in a foreign land? (Psalm 137:1-4)
But later, they got used to lifestyle in captivity. Life in Babylon became very comfortable. Even better than their life in Israel. They were more abundant, more food, more money, more sophisticated civilization. Culturally it was superior to their old lifestyle.
But in the midst of it, they lost God in their consciousness. When you don’t have God, do you know what happens? You depend on only what you can see. That’s what happens when God disappears in your consciousness. Only through faith, you can go beyond what you can see.
Their life was filled with a lot of things but somehow there was no satisfaction in them. They had bread and water but it was bread that could not fill them and water that could not quench them them. These things did not give them satisfaction.
That’s why Isaiah said this.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which does not satisfy? (Isaiah 55:2)
What he meant was, “Why do you spend your money for the bread that does not fill you up, and your labour that does not satisfy you?” They had bread, they had money, and they worked hard but nothing really satisfied them. They were lost.
But God did not leave them alone. God invited them to come back to him. God wanted to give them the living water.
The Whole Picture
There was a woman in Samaria. She failed marriage several times. She wasn’t happy and she couldn’t find satisfaction anywhere. She met Jesus. Knowing what she needed, Jesus said this.
Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.’ (John 4:13-15)
Jesus was not talking about water she could see. Jesus was talking about water she could not see. That water gave her true satisfaction.
When we come to God, we are introduced to the world of what cannot be seen. We discover that God is much greater than we can imagine.
That was what Isaiah discovered.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8-9)
When we pray, we will discover God whose ways are higher than our ways, and whose thoughts higher than our thoughts.
Many times, we don’t see the whole picture of life. When we suffer, we don’t see hope. We only see the suffering. When we are sick, we don’t see healing. We only see the sickness. That’s not the whole picture. That’s only the half picture.
Let us focus on God whose ways are higher than our ways. Let us leave our lives in God whose thoughts are higher than our thoughts.
Prayer
In a way we don’t know, God will allow us to see what we could not see before. Life’s happiness is hidden in what cannot be seen.
That was what I shared yesterday in my Inner Voice.
God calls into being things that are not. God is creator and he creates life from the dead. With God, we can hope for things that look impossible in our eyes. When we have hope, we can imagine things that are not visible to us. That is what prayer is. Prayer is not seeking what we can see but what we cannot see.
Yes, that’s what prayer is. Prayer is to imagine what we cannot see. As we live a life of prayer, we become comfortable with what cannot be seen. You even enjoy what cannot be seen. You can imagine what you don’t see right now.
When you see all your doors closed, imagine a small door opening for you. When you see your sickness, imagine healing. When you see your tears, imagine tears being wiped away. When you see war, imagine peace being restored.
That’s what prayer is. When you pray, you start living by what you cannot see, not just by what you can see.
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