Clarity

My wife, Tandie, and I were at the baggage carousel in the airport the other day, waiting for her second bag.  We kept looking as the same bags kept rolling around but not hers.  We began to wonder if it had been lost.  Finally, grabbed a bag that I had seen twice already and flipped it over, it was hers.  As my mom would have said, "If it had been a snake, it would have bit you."  In other words, it was right there in plain sight but I plainly didn't see it.

I was with an elderly patient and her daughter, a little while ago when she asked, "Have you seen my glasses?"  Her daughter replied, "Yes I have, they are on your nose."  Funny how things can be right there, in plain sight or right under our nose and we don't see them.

The problem, so often, is not that things are hidden but that we lack focus or are looking past them.  We can become so distracted with so many things that we can't see what we're looking for even though it is right before our very eyes, right under our very noses and we are fortunate it wasn't a snake or it would have bit us.

Finding or coming to grips with God's will, so much of the time, is precisely like that.  We look on far distant shores to find a soul to save while the majority of unchurched people say they would go to church with a friend if asked.  We look about for opportunities to feed the hungry while walking past a homeless individual without even glancing his way.  So many are waiting for God to show them their purpose while walking past a need muttering, "Someone should do something about that."

Jesus once chided his disciples, "Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest" (Jn 4:35).  He words were plain, don't keep waiting for something to do, open your eyes to all the need around you!  Nothing has changed, our heavenly Father is always at work (cf. Jn 5:17) and this work, whether across the sea or across the street, is what he intends for us, "For we are created in Christ to do the good works which God prepared in advance for us to do" (Eph 2:10).

We don't really need a voice from above or a vision in the clouds, what we need is clarity in our path. Daily we encounter needs along the way.  We walk right past someone needing our attention, leaving missed opportunities lying along our path.  Distracted by the cares of our day, we pay no attention to Divine encounters in our daily walk.  We ask, "How are you doing?" not expecting or hear or even listening for an opportunity to actually help.

It is not the failure of God to present opportunities  for service or ministry to us, it is our failure to open our eyes and see the needs around us and to seek a way to meet them.  We're not lacking in opportunities to see, we simply aren't taking the opportunity to look.  What we lack is clarity and mostly because we aren't looking at what is right before our very eyes.  Jus' Say'n.