Blinds – and Learning to Truly See
Life is simpler and easier when you keep the blinds shut.
Less light, less noise, fewer distractions – you can remain convinced of your own constructed reality as long as you keep those blind shut! Blinds offer a simpler world that makes sense and never challenges you to adapt. But if you want to stay alive, adaptation is the name of the game.
You can live your life with blinders on, or you can intentionally keep pulling back the curtains of your world to see the truth.
Yesterday was this spring’s Pray4Chicago event – each one is profoundly different from the last one, but all are huge successes – because at the end of the day you can see the blinds have been pulled back just a little more. Friends went out into various neighborhoods surrounding UIC including Little Italy, Bronzeville, and the Loop to “see with God’s eyes…” and if God’s eyes can offer us anything, they offer us a chance to pull the curtains back and live in the world of the REAL, not my private world of safety.
Folks that had lived in their neighborhood for years reflected on how little they knew about their neighbors or surroundings. Others were struck at how easy it was to strike up a conversation (or join a game of basketball), while others were broken by the level of systemic oppression they saw just around the block. All groups considered just what it would take to SEE a vibrant family of Jesus in close reach of every person in Chicago…
It starts with new eyes… “eyes to see and ears to hear…”
What is this world we’ve fallen in to?
Learning to see — its a skill that most of us are born with…but it takes a lifetime to master. Where is God at work? Where are the broken places? Where are the community wells? Where is the Spirit at work? How do I join the Spirit?
Learning to truly see takes a lifetime – but it starts with a desire to pull back the curtains of your own eyes – to see what is behind the blinds of our daily life, and to fall into the adventure of a Spirit-led, missional lifestyle.
