multiple views

Do you ever see something as if looking through a kaleidoscope, where all the exterior elements are eliminated and your mind zooms in on the one thing? And as if that’s not enough, it’s multiplied and so powerful that it moves you, I mean really stirs you to the point where you actually feel it– something you never fully believed you were capable of feeling in the first place? I was caught off guard by this recently. Oddly enough I imagine that this will happen to me again when I get back home. I daydream about it. Like I’ll be shopping in Target or something and all of the sudden I’ll see an object that will trigger a memory and as much as I’ve thought about it, I’m sure I’ll still be affected by it and won’t know what to do……Actually I think I’m nervous about what those moments will look like and possibly more fearful that this world here will fade all too quickly into the background of my rushed life in the USA.
I was surprised how much I was not keenly aware of my surroundings the other day when this image really thieved its way into my heart. In any given moment, I could think of various situations where I felt an image was an analogy of sorts and somehow pointed me towards God. Or perhaps something that sounded like God or looked like Him, but this one seemed to resonate so closely with what I needed, I was fascinated.
After all these years I’m surely flawed as I continue to struggle with what God’s love looks like, why I’m so important to Him, or how I can embrace what He offers even just a little bit more? In all of this I am certainly lacking.
This week we assisted with the graduation for the school we’ve been volunteering at and as the hour approached, I found myself in a sea of mothers adorning their kids with homemade flowers, tarrying over each misplaced hair, and adjusting caps in preparation for the ceremony. As I slid clumsily through the chaotic room, camera in hand, my lense fell to a father knelt down in front of his daughter. This man was older; he almost seemed too aged to have a daughter so young, so he certainly stood out. He handled his little girl with such tender care, adjusting her robe, wiping the sweat from her brow, and doting on her in everyway. Jennifer caught my stare and gently reminded me that this little girl was adopted. I was in awe. I mean the thought of adoption alone is a powerful casting of the same image over and over in my mind. It is one that says at the core I choose to love you, I pick you over all others, and I call you mine. But to top that with true poverty and desperation coupled with this authentic expression of love, it sent my thoughts spinning. He may have been the proudest father among all the parents there and believe me, the competition was thick. I know it seems really simple but I tell you, it was gripping. I mean if you saw his eyes the way I did, the way he looked at her, the way he embraced her, or how all of his affection was pointed to her, it was overwhelming. And I couldn’t help but think of God. Looking back, I felt like that little girl. But not the way you’d picture. I mean she was looking in the distance, she didn’t see her dad. She let him do what it was that He was doing but she missed it, she missed seeing all that was held in those wrinkles, and in that smile, and in those piercing eyes. Surely God is at work fixing us and changing us to be a reflection of Him, but all the while deeply loving us like only a true father can, for we are His and instead of looking beyond Him to the next thing, I have to remember there’s a lot to be captured from looking into His face.