Every moment is an opportunity for encountering God, if we look with the eyes of the heart, for there is a spiritual seeing through and beyond natural seeing.
This was brought home to me last week when I made a retreat and read Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s novella, The Little Prince. It is a delightful fantasy, based on the imagination of children, and conveys deep truth. The Little Prince leaves his tiny asteroid home and his one vain little rose, to visit earth via a series of planets. On each of these he encounters obsessed grown-ups, whose lives are being wasted because they cannot perceive “important things”. Over eight days in the Sahara Desert the perceptive child makes friends with a stranded pilot and comes to realize that his rose was unique and special because she was the object of his love and time. Another special relationship develops with a little fox who helps the Prince realize that most people never find what they desire most, because “the eyes are blind. One must look with the heart”.
This is an important truth for us all and in Holy Week we can step aside and ask God to help us see life differently. Yet, we can make a few minutes at any time to be in God’s presence, giving him our love and time. The little boy loved to gaze at sunsets, as do I, for their beauty seems ethereal, but many things can help us begin to “fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Corinthians 4.18).
Much of life around us may seem tedious, even depressing, but when we let God show us what lies within and beyond what our physical eyes see, he can show us the hope to which he has called us, the riches of his love shared amongst us, and the power of his indwelling presence to live for him, in this present age and in the one to come (Ephesians 1.18-19).
“Seek and you will find” (Luke 11.9). May God open the eyes of our hearts in the coming week, so that we may see Christ present with us, for he is “the fullness of him who fills everything in every way” (Ephesians 1.23).