I Kings 3:5, 7-12 / Rom 8:26-27 / Mt 13:24-43 or Mt 13:24-30
A man and his wife pulled into a gas station. As their tank was being filled, the attendant washed their windshield. But when he finished, the driver said, “It’s still dirty. Wash it again.”
“Yes, sir,” said the boy, searching for any bugs he might have missed.
“It’s still dirty!” barked the driver when he was done. “Don’t you know how to wash a windshield?” So the poor kid went about it a third time, very, very carefully.
When he finished, the driver screamed: “It’s still dirty. You’re the lousiest windshield washer I’ve ever seen. Where’s your boss?” With that, the driver’s wife, leaned over, removed his glasses and cleaned them. And, miraculously, the windshield was spotless!
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How much of reality do we see? Probably only fragments! And why do we see so little of what’s there? Our own agenda and our expectations of what reality is or ought to be get in the way and blind us. And so we project our own motives and our own reality onto others. For example:
— I’m a greedy cut-throat, so I presume everybody else is too, and thus I live in a scary world … which I created in my own image.
— I never thought much of Uncle George, so I laughed at him when he offered me Microsoft at $2 a share. What could he know?
— I was a basketball star in high school, so my kids are all going to do the same, even though they’re all midgets.
— I like privacy, so I moved to the Gobi desert, never seeing that the isolation would drive my wife over the edge.
Projection and false expectations are master blinders, and so is fear. My life is too awful to look at, so I don’t look, and the abuse and misery go on. A new venture involves risks, so I get far too busy to look at it either.
Not seeing/not hearing impoverishes our lives and does serious damage as well. Nowhere is it more destructive than at the very center of our lives. The Spirit whispers to us constantly from within, but what do we hear? Just fragments. The Spirit speaks to us every day through the whole of creation, offering us reassurance that we’re not alone, comforting us, showing us where we’re needed. How much of that do we hear? Bits and pieces. No wonder so many of us feel alone, sad, unsure, and un-needed so often.
Solomon got it just right when God offered him anything he wanted: He asked for a listening heart. Somehow he understood that if only he could see and hear the Spirit within him and God’s good world around him, without his fears and his own expectations getting in the way, he’d know for sure who he was and where God was calling him. He’d know.
And so will we know — who we are and where we’re meant to be. We’ll know, if only we trust God enough to let our hearts listen and see … with all the filters down. Listen and see: God’s world is and our place in it are wonderful beyond all imagining, a thousand times better than the best of our illusions.
Listen and see! But remember, you have to clean your glasses first!
