“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”
Our lives are filled with darkness and light. We are broken people who live in a broken world. We are both victims and victimizers. Our wounds and trauma do affect how we live and how we love. Our pasts are always part of our present. Our lives will always be full of regrets, rebellion, successes and failures. To know ourselves is to see dimly and to accept ourselves is to rest in mystery.
Have you considered that to see dimly is not a punishment but a gift. It is a grace from God that frees us to rest and trust in being fully known and fully accepted by the divine. If we see our world dimly, then we see ourselves dimly and maybe that’s a good thing. Perhaps, this is the grace that we need to live in the present and to trust in His love to protect and provide for us every moment of everyday- without knowing or worrying about all the things that are absolutely out of our control.
Maybe seeing dimly allows us to love ourselves and our neighbors and let go of trying to be their savior and their god. With dim eyes, we can focus on using our hearts to love and spend time cultivating things that we could never see like faith, hope, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and self-control. Do we need eyes to love? Is it better when we are moved by love and we give no matter what that person looks like and how hopeless the situation appears to be?
Is it time that we stopped trusting in our dim eyes to see and started trusting in the Holy Spirit to guide us to people and places that we would never go. Can we allow ourselves to be led where we need? Maybe… we don’t need to see where we are going but we just need to be led, in order to learn that we can trust in a God who sees all, knows all and loves us more than we can ever hope for or imagine with nothing less than crazy, stubborn love.
DeeAnn Dean 