Hidden

This week I’ve been reading the story of Samuel. The story starts before Samuel actually does, with Hannah, a woman who can’t have children crying out to God for a child. That’s a common motif in Biblical stories. God using people who feel they’ve been forgotten and have little to offer. You can read the story in 1 Samuel chapter 1. What stood out to me, along with God’s choosing to use a woman society would have seen of little value, was that as Eli the High Priest watched her pray he assumed that she was drunk because of the way her lips were moving with no sound. He rebuked her, only to hear what was really going on in her prayer. To Eli’s credit, he changed course immediately and blessed her with these words, “Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of him.”

As I reflected on the event I was reminded how far too often we jump to conclusions based on what we think we are seeing and miss what God is doing in a given situation. Evelyn Underhill writes, “It is notorious that the operations of the average human consciousness unite the self, not with things as they really are, but with images, notions, aspects of things.” (Practical Mysticism, chapter 1) It’s her way of saying we connect with what we think we see, often basing it on things we have seen before, instead of actually encountering reality as it truly is.

Perhaps we all know this, and I’m wasting time writing this post, but something in me tells me that even though we are aware that this happens, we still seem fairly confident with our take on any given reality. I read a story several years ago of a man with four children who boarded a subway train in New York. Much to the other passengers frustration, the children ran through the car, playing loudly and disruptively in an apparent attempt to irritate every single passenger. Their father, meanwhile, just sat quietly in his seat, staring out the window, seemingly oblivious to it all. Finally one person who had had quite enough of this display stormed over and reprimanded the man. “Your children are irritating everyone! Please settle them down!”. The man quickly snapped to from his daze and said, “Oh, I’m so sorry. We just came from the hospital where their mother passed away.” The tension immediately drained from the subway car as everyone found a new and deeper compassion for the situation they had so poorly assessed just minutes earlier.

In the recent documentary, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, Fred Rogers quoted a line from The Little Prince, “What is essential in life is invisible to the eye.” The longer I walk this path in my relationship with Jesus the more I find this to be true. There is a reality that often lies beneath the surface of our perception. A reality that is truer and deeper than what we see on the surface. This is good news, because it means that even when we encounter situations that look bleak and hopeless there may lie beneath them something redemptive and restorative. Take the cross as an example. What everyone else saw as a failure of a Jewish revolutionary has actually revolutionized our relationship with God. In the midst of a difficult time Paul tells the church in Corinth, “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18)

This truth cuts two ways. First of all, we need to be a bit slower in our assessment of others and their situations. That woman the religious leader thinks is drunk and disorderly may just be communing with God in a real and honest way. Give people (and God) space and time for what is really happening to bubble to the top. You can hold your opinion (and your tongue) for a while and let things play out. You might be pleasantly surprised at what comes to light.

Second, don’t rush to quantify and assess your own situation too quickly. When something happens we weren’t expecting we often board the train of “this is the beginning of the end” instead of sitting still long enough to hear that still small voice reminding us that God is here. He’s at work. It’s hidden at times, but nonetheless real.