How do we see?

 

February finds us in the middle of choosing paint colours. Along with many others, we decided that lockdown seemed like a good time to decorate and so we have a mystifying range of small squares on our walls, which we dally in front of at different times of the day, in order to see which colour works best.

The slightly bemusing thing is that different colours work better at different times of the day, depending on the how the light hits them, but they change again depending on what colour goes next to them, and yet again depending on what mood I find myself in as I look at them. Given all the gloominess of the last year, right now I am in serious danger of making everything as bright and colourful as it possibly can be, a lockdown legacy I might come to regret.

How we see things is fascinating, and not just paint colours. It depends on what head space we are in, who we are with, our circumstances, our past, it all plays a part in our viewpoint. Yet it plays just as big a part in the viewpoint of the person next to us who might have an entirely different viewpoint. Which is right? Well it depends….

Jesus is always found turning conventional wisdom on its head. He crosses boundaries all the time and challenges us to think differently, to see the world through a different lens. He challenged the crowd ready to stone the woman caught in adultery, to look at their own lives before judging others; he ignored the advice of his disciples ready to walk past the blind beggar and called him over; to the disapproval of society, he spent his time with those the world saw as worthless.

 Jesus asks us to look again in a new light, to see the world through a different lens. To let him be our vision.

 “Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart,
Naught be all else to me, save that thou art;
Thou my best thought by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, thy presence my light.”