Look into their eyes...

“You can see Jesus anywhere”…was what I overheard last weekend at a workshop I went to about child abuse. I have been rolling that around in my head since that day and what that means and the implications that would mean for all followers of Christ. I love the stories in the bible where Jesus heals the blind, he helps them to see things from a new perspective, he helps to bring life and color back into their darkened lives, maybe even opens up their minds and they way they saw the world. There were no barriers for Jesus; he took light to all people. This week I sat with one girl and after I immediately introduced myself she automatically put me and her in an “us” vs. “them” camp. She said, “So you’re not like us?” To which I said, “Well I am I’m a woman just like you.” My heart sank because I knew right there that she and I would never be able to come to the same camp site. In her eyes her identity was her dark past and I was just another Caucasian woman who “has it all together” who would never understand her story. But I looked again in her eyes and as we conversed we found common ground in that she lived in the Middle East and I told her I did also. When we see the image of God in people we should have the heart to keep finding ways to open their eyes and our own. Through that experience I gained a trust from her and as I looked at her eyes I could see her creep towards the middle camp site where I was waiting. As the evening progressed she turned and looked me straight in the eyes and asked “do you ever get lonely?” “ABSOLUTIELY!” I said. “Really even though you look like that?” she asked. Compassion filled me and I smile and said, “I feel that way many times and just because you look one way or another does not mean we have it all together.” That night she and I helped one another through our individual blindness, her in her assumptions and me in lack of faith that God can find ways to connect people no matter how dark the situation. She gave me life and color back that night when I looked in her eyes. Being a Christ follower is not easy, peaceful and especially not comfortable, and we have to learn to open our hearts to take away any blindness we have towards people we find it hard to have compassion for. It’s my prayer the more I spend with these courageous women the more my own blindness is cured with each time I spend looking in their eyes. It seems that when we have the scales or the mud taken from our eyes we are able to look into the eyes of others and see they bear the image of God just as we do, we are the same—when you look in their eyes. You can find Him and His image anywhere-all you do is look. As C.S. Lewis wrote, “there are no ordinary beings.”