One More Thing with Pastor Tim Burchill 3.11.2024

Those With Eyes to See, Let Them See

    There are a lot of people who struggle with traveling if they aren’t in the front seat of the car.  But them in the back seat or in the third row at your own peril, because there’s a good chance they’re going to get car sick.  Some folks just have a predisposition to motion sickness.  Other folks were just too slow in calling “shotgun” and use this excuse to bump someone else out of the coveted passenger seat.

    Research has shown that there is actually a source for a lot of car sickness.  It has to do with a ‘slippage of focus’ which occurs when our eyes seek rapid movement outside the side window while our inner ear and body give us the sensation of being in one place.  The best way to handle this—hence the front seat—is to keep our eyes on the horizon or something that is a good distance ahead.  It too is relatively unmoving, thus the kinetic disconnect between what we see and what we feel is greatly reduced.

    Yesterday we talked about the man born blind who is given sight and the religious teachers who are born with sight but fail to see what God is doing right in front of them.  How do we make sure we recognize what God is doing, how do we track with Jesus day by day?  We do it by asking God to give us the ability to see the world around us the way Jesus does.  In other words, we keep our eyes on the big picture, the furthest horizon in which God’s will is done and God’s Kingdom comes on earth as it is already made manifest in heaven.  
To avoid spiritual vision slippage, we are called to see the people around us from an eternal perspective; we are called to see in our children the adults they might one day become; we are called to see our friends at their very best and not at their worst; we are called to see our church as it can be—with every woman, man, and child taking up the mantle of faith, hope, and love.

    It’s also not a bad thing to always put ourselves in the passenger seat of whatever vehicle Jesus is driving.  You’ve heard of the bumper sticker, “God is my co-pilot.”  And you might have heard the reply, “You’re in the wrong seat.  Move over and let God have the wheel.”  Keeping our focus on the eternal perspective of Jesus as well as making sure we stay in the passenger seat and not the driver’s seat—two excellent points that might have made yesterday’s sermon if we just had a little more time!