Seeing is all about the back story.

The Lord looks from heaven;
He sees all the sons of men.
From the place of His dwelling He looks
On all the inhabitants of the earth;
He fashions their hearts individually;
He understands all their works. Psalm 33:13-15

And I know that God is love hungry, for he is constantly pointing me to some dull, dead soul which he has never reached and wistfully urges me to help him reach that stolid, tight shut mind. Oh God, how I long to help you with these Moros. And with these Americans! And with these Filipinos! All day I see souls dead to God look sadly out of hungry eyes. Letters from a Modern Mystic, Frank Laubach

This morning, when I went to the exercise park like every morning, the guy who used to work with UNHCR and is the official translator for me and my new friends, told me that it makes everyone very happy that I come each day and exercise with them. And I turned and smiled and waved to the group working out on the bars, and they smiled and waved at me.

And yesterday when we went to the national parks and hung out with the thousands of Iraqis who bussed in from Baghdad and Mosel and Basra to splash around in the river and the waterfall and the practically freezing mountain temperature of 105, quite a few folks came up and shyly asked if I would hold their baby for a picture, or whether I would stand in the middle of their family for a group shot. Just like Everette and Simone in Vietnam. And sometimes, there was a back story. 

The blue-eyed lady posing with baby                  

 

Nathan ducking out of the picture

There is always a back story. Only One sees.

I was thinking about this as I was tromping past my daily trees, and I think it fits into my meditation on truly seeing. Maybe it is part of the healing process to see an emrîkî not dressed in camouflage fatigues carrying a large Beretta M9. Just like how someone texted me in response to yesterday’s photos of Rawanduz and Geli Ali Beg: I never imagined fun pretty places like this in the Middle East. The Middle East that is always at war. And the rich and powerful continue their air-conditioned, chauffeured life, and the rest, well, the rest are resilient and gracious.

And at first glance my experiment in giving was disappointing. I went and changed all of my twenties into assorted dinar and handed them out pretty cheerfully and indiscriminately to anyone who asked as we traveled through the day: the kids selling packs of gum got 5,000 dinar, the family with the tiny baby in a stroller got 10000, and so did the older lady sitting along the wall in the shade.

No one said, “Thank you.”

Not a single one even paused in the sing-song chanting of “alsadaqat lilfuqara'” (friendship for the poor) or the tugging on the shirtsleeves. And I am pretty sure my team was a little crabby with my experiment, because that meant that the gum kids stuck just like gum to us as we waded through the waterfalls, tugging at all of our shirtsleeves, relentlessly.

But then, of course, then I remembered the sad looks of Jesus. When only the Samaritan leper returned. When the rich young ruler walked away. When the disciples haggled about who forgot to bring bread or who was greatest in the kingdom and pushed back the bothersome children.

I am they. The ones who don’t pause in their litany of murmurs and fussing and complaints about how things aren’t going according to plan.

And the profound joy when people got it: The centurion and the Syrophoenician widow. And probably even when Peter first leaped out of the boat.

I am not succeeding in keeping God in my mind very many hours of the day, and from the point of view of experiment number one I should have to record a pretty high percentage of failure. But the other experiment - what happens when I do succeed - is so successful that it makes up for the failure of number one. God does work a change. The moment I turn to Him it is like turning on an electric current which I feel through my whole being. I find also that the effort to keep God in my mind does something to my mind which every mind needs to have done to it. I am given something difficult enough to keep my mind with a keen edge. The constant temptation of every man is to allow his mind to grow old and lose its edge. I feel that I am perhaps more lazy mentally than the average person, and I require the very mental discipline which this constant effort affords. Letters from a Modern Mystic, Frank Laubach

I am not sure my brain is lazy, but it is certainly distractable. And even though the verses seem to clash with the more hopeful “my yoke is easy, and my burden is light,” I get all of those striving and running the race sorts of verses.

So here we go again, Jesus. A new day.

Let me be the one who returns. Who falls on my face at Your feet and gives You thanks.

  

And help me learn to see. As You do, the One who sees all the sons of men, and sent His only Begotten Son.

 Lord, we are bound to You by grace, grafted into Your kingdom by love. Since the beginning of time You have given gifts of Your beauty and kindness and joy to us Your children. Teach us to embody Your loving presence in all that we do this day. Amen.