Seeing the same thing differently

The hour is approaching when the Academy Awards come to the Isaiah House for women without homes. Our excitement is growing, while theirs is non-existent. All they know about is another free meal. They have no idea they are about to be dressed in faux furs and feathers, entertained by music, escorted down the red carpet, announced by the Master of Ceremonies and called up to receive their very own Oscar as a survivor of second beginnings. On top of all this, each “nominee” will be receiving a pair of premium sunglasses courtesy of Spy Optic where what’s important is “not seeing different things; it’s seeing the same thing differently.” That signature statement alone is loaded with applicable truth for the real world. For instance, Jesus was always talking about the kingdom of heaven, but then when he explained it, it wasn’t about heaven at all, it was about what’s going on here. It wasn’t about a different place; it was about a different way of seeing this place. The kingdom of heaven is about a new way of looking at the kingdom of earth. It’s about seeing losers as winners, about seeing the last as the first, about seeing the poor and the beggars as the most blessed; it’s about seeing God’s will done on earth as it is in heaven because you can, in fact, see differently. We need to cultivate this ability. We need to train ourselves to see and value things as Jesus values them. We need to meditate on his teaching and let it shape how we think, what we value, and what we act on. It just might be that with the right pairs of glasses on, the Academy Awards tomorrow night in Santa Ana will surpass the other Academy Awards soon to be held in Hollywood, in the things that really matter.

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2 Responses to Seeing the same thing differently

  1. As a newby to this blog, I’d like to say, John, that I love your questions, though I don’t always agree with your answers. But as someone once said, it’s not giving the right answers that is important, but asking the right questions. You do that.

    One of the great accomplishments of writer Randy Alcorn is making Christendom aware that Heaven is a place on earth, not somewhere “up there.” He explains that concept in great scriptural detail in his book, Heaven. The spiritual realm occupied by God and the angels is not a place “out there;” it is intermixed with the physical realm right here right now. So when Jesus was talking about seeing the same thing differently, as you put it, He was, in fact, talking about Heaven because Heaven is all around us. God’s Spirit and angels and who knows what else fill the rooms we occupy, the roads we drive, the factories and offices in which we work, etc. We just aren’t seeing them because we aren’t looking for them because we are asleep at the switch spiritually. But they’re there.

    Angels never “come down from Heaven” in the Bible, they appear – as if they were there all along but we just didn’t see them. Elijah didn’t ask that his servant be transported to a place above earth so that he could see angels; he merely asked that God would open his eyes. And when God did so, the angels were all around them, right here on earth.

    We are surrounded by we know not what, if only we had eyes to see.

  2. By the way: this really is a great post. My comments are merely the crumbs after the bread cart.

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