Today’s Word from Laura Canby…
At first, I thought he misspoke. It was a couple weeks ago and Pastor Jim was giving the Transfiguration Sunday sermon for later online posting. He read the verse in Corinthians 13:12 where Paul writes: For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.
I was more familiar with the King James version which reads: For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
I had always thought the verse referred to a time when we would have a clearer, unobstructed view or understanding of God, but the word ‘mirror’ threw me. A mirror reflects, not allows for looking through like glass does. A mirror reflects principally the person looking into it, and also their surroundings.
Could Paul have meant that someday we will have a better understanding of ourselves and the times in which our lives take place? That we will have not only a better understanding of who we are, but the choices we make, the options open to us, as well as the portions of the good and bad which thread through our lives?
Our lives are like a river. No person ever steps into the same river twice, for it is not the same river and it is not the same person. Such are the words of Heraclitus of Ephesus, a Greek philosopher, whose philosophy was centered around the concept of everything being in constant motion and change.
Sometimes I wonder how a God who transcends time sees us as we move through our earthly time-bound lives. Does He see us as “fully known” as in the entirety of our lives?
A few years ago, I pondered this concept in a poem I wrote…
The Eyes of God
When you, my God, look deep at me,
I sometimes wonder just who you see?
An embryo within my mother’s womb,
or at end of life as dust entombed?
Perhaps all the me’s along the way,
as soul emerged from day to day?
The teenage me who sought your face?
The young explorer who fled your grace?
The doubter believing only now and then?
Or prodigal daughter come home again?
Or do you behold some other timeless view
of a grace-filled child alive in you?
Adjust my eyes, that I may see — others —
through love-filled eyes as you see me.
May God grant us His eyes to see others with the same love and value as He sees us in the totality of our frail humanity, seeking for the Divine.
Laura Canby
