Keep Your Eyes on God

 

I’ve been struggling to write a blog posting about love; it’s such a simple, yet immensely complicated thing.  I now have come to realize that I can’t really think about it --- not in the sense of understanding it.  God IS Love; how could I ever comprehend the totality of His Being so I can write it all down?

But there are some things I can comprehend --- or think I do.  How many hundred times did I read and reflect on Matthew 14, where Jesus walks on water, and bids Peter to come to Him.  And Peter does, also walking on water until He takes his eyes (and focus) off of Jesus, and he begins to sink.  I could write many words, deeply insightful and perhaps inspired words about this passage.  I mean I understood the message, or I thought I did.

In reflections in The Better Part (#47) about that Gospel, Fr. Bartunek wrote: “as he let his eyes wander away from Christ to examine the intimidating waves, he began to sink.”  Certainly, I could add to Fr. Bartunek’s words, but the word “intimidating” struck me.  What would you say if I asked you what was intimidating in your life?  I can imagine many of your answers.  It’s a rare person who would respond: “Nothing.”   We live in the world, and therefore the world does affect us in some way.  It must, but how we react is the question.  Do we ignore the world and events around us, or do we let them influence us in some way?  How much?  You can ignore the breeze or the beautiful sunshine, but you better not ignore that STOP sign.  So, in the situation Peter was in, how could he not be aware, and even worried, about the waves?  That’s why the quote I noted so struck me tonight.

I guess it started a few weeks ago, when my local church displayed a large banner in the narthex.  The banner had a large Image of Jesus’ crucified face, and the words “Seeing Jesus among us,” and lower down were the words “Seeing the face of Jesus in everyone.”  That face and the words seemed to hang with me, like it was important, but I wasn’t sure why.  On the surface, I equated it with the command that we must love God and neighbor, but that seemed too simple.

Tonight, reading Fr. Bartunek’s Gospel commentary about Peter sinking caused me to recall that banner, and my previous attempts to describe my thoughts about love.  I think I now have a better insight into a key underpinning about that word love, and what it means to each of us.  The banner is a suggestion on how we should live our life, seeing the face of Jesus in everyone.  After all, we are all God’s children and He loves each of us, whether we are a good child or a bad one, and so each person is our sibling.  There are many reasons for siblings to argue or even not talk to one another, but we have a parent telling us “to apologize to your sibling.”  In the Gospel of Matthew, that parent tells us rather bluntly that if we have anything against our neighbor to go and ask forgiveness before we enter the Father’s house, and in another place in Matthew are words telling us that we should ask forgiveness if our neighbor has anything against us.  Either way, we are commanded to reconcile before going into the Father’s house.  It’s like a father telling his kids to make up, no matter what the fight was about, or who was right or wrong.  That is what that banner tells me.

Peter’s sinking is not due to his not treating his neighbor right, but from choosing (with his free will) not to see the face of Jesus right in front of him.  And he begins to sink.  Earlier I wrote of how it seems Peter could not ignore the world around him, even as we can’t, but that word “intimidating” explains something he (and we) could do.  We could remember that banner.  There are troubles in the world, in our politics, in our state, and in our family, things in some way impacting us that are hard to ignore.  But we can choose to not be “intimidated” by them, to let those events outside of our control (like the waves around Peter) be a worry --- because it will cause us to take our eyes off the face of Jesus.  And we will begin to sink.

We can choose not to be irritated about politics or wars or even the behavior of some of our siblings especially if, unlike the STOP sign, it will have no immediate direct impact on us.  And in choosing not to be irritated by them, or talk about them to get others irritated about them, we CAN instead resolve to pray about them, because God can do something about them.  And in recalling the face of Jesus in each person, we can calm ourselves down.  Remember how much He suffered for us, each one.  Despite all that is happening, He is in control.  He is God.  Keep your eyes on God, and you won’t crash --- or sink.  Just trust in God.  I know that’s hard to do; that’s probably why they wrote those words as a reminder on one of our coins.