“Viewed from the distance of the moon, the astonishing thing about the earth, catching the breath, is that it is alive.” Those are the words of a philosopher, Lewis Thomas, written in 1974, as he reflected on the unforgettable experience in 1969 of astronaut Neil Armstrong, who stood on the moon and looked back at earth. The philosopher is quoted in a 2005 book, “A Crack in the Edge of the World,” by Simon Winchester. Winchester points out that for all ages up to this point, geologists were concerned with rock strata and found fossils – just scratching the surface, so to speak. Now able to see the earth as a whole, geologists now examine the earth as “one entire and immense system, the most refined of its details all interwoven with the biggest of big concepts.” I am led to wonder about what it is that we can see, and what we cannot see, and what we choose to see, and why at times we turn away from what we see.
* * * The TV station where I was working some years ago ran a promotion for advertisers – those who committed to buy a certain amount of television time were invited to go along on a trip to the Bahamas. My wife and I filled two unsold spaces on that tour. Coincidentally, a local college intern in our TV newsroom, Debbie, came from Nassau, so we took the opportunity to learn about her homeland, and she made arrangements for us to meet her family. Most of the people on our junket spent their time enjoying golf, tennis, time on the beach and visiting the casinos. We went to the beach too – but the most memorable part of our trip was the visit with a family on the non-tourist side of the island. It was winter at home, but this family had tropical fruit trees in the back yard. Bright lights glared from the distant casinos, but this family had electric power only a few hours each day. What did we see? We saw people who were no longer nameless inhabitants of another country; they were Debbie’s mother and grandparents.
* * * Jesse Manibusan composed the words of a song, which include, “Open my eyes, Lord. Help me to see your face. Open my eyes, Lord. Help me to see.” If we truly seek to see the face of the Lord, we have only to look into the face of the one next to us, or into the faces of the family in the neighborhood or across town, the old woman in the nursing home, the hungry child in the picture from the foreign missions – or the one down the street. In Luke’s Gospel (Chapter 18) Jesus asks a blind man, “What do you want me to do for you?” He replied, “Lord, please let me see.” Jesus responds, “Have sight; your faith has saved you.” Perhaps the beginning of sight is only the beginning of the miracle.
* * * Take the time to reflect on the times you may have stopped at a “Scenic Overlook” on a vacation trip. Or the first time you said, “I’ve been looking all over for that something, and it was right in front of me all the time!” Find out what helps to hide the faces of people in need. Is it shame? Is it an unpleasant illness? Is it a fear of deportation? Some people, I am sure, are hiding from our sight. Others are begging to be seen. They are the lonely, the imprisoned, the men and women in facilities that provide the kind of care that families cannot provide. In the face of each of these is the face of Jesus. Perhaps, in a variation of an over-used commercial for cell phone service, we could discover that Jesus is the one who is hungry or thirsty or alone, and he is saying to each of us, “Can you see me now?”
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