N.Elaine A. Valenzuela
You and I connect. We get connected with different people— our family, friends, school mates, work mates, church mates, with the differently-abled, people with mental health issues, marginalised people and people in the community of different ages, different genders, different cultures through Facebook, twitter, Instagram, sports, media, different ministries, mission work and even through music and the arts.
Having an open eye is seeing with happiness and empathy; it is seeing beyond our naked eyes, beyond what is visible physically. Through our eyes, there is understanding, kindness, honesty, unity and friendship. We listen to others. We look at each other’s heart and we listen to one’s self. The eye is the window of our soul. We show expression through the eyes. It is understanding people better and building bigger relationships. Our lives as seen by others are communicating and seeing the works of God in us. We are all one, united by faith and not by denominations.
I, together with my church family at St. Albans Uniting Church recently attended a family camp held at Merricks Lodge and there we got connected more. The Spirit uses the Scripture, fellowship and devotional practices to develop in us the spiritual eyes to see what God is doing. We spend time to read the Scripture in order to connect with God. We do meditation and set a time with God, sometimes on our way to work or school, while commuting, we listen to His words through different technology. We find time to reflect during the day and apply in our daily life what we have read. During fellowship, we crave for relationship with others and with God. Conflicts and misunderstandings happen, differences happen, but our adversaries help us learn and overcome these situations.
Sometimes, people get disconnected because we tend to look at our differences, our status, our age and not our similarities, sometimes our cultural ego – one being superior or inferior than the other, the marginalised versus the rich people which makes us detest one another, hear but never understanding and see but never perceiving one another. In situations like these, we pray that the eyes of our heart will have enough light to see what is the hope of God’s call, what is the richness of God’s glorious inheritance among believers and what is the overwhelming greatness of God’s power that is working among us believers. (Ephesians 1:17-19)
