Today I offer an observation from Henry David Thoreau that
has stayed with me:
“The question is not what you
look at, but what you see.”
At first, I took those words simply as a reminder to look
more carefully. But the longer I considered them, the more I began to see a
spiritual meaning within them. There is a difference between having eyesight
and having insight.
The Savior once asked:
“Having eyes, see ye not? and
having ears, hear ye not? and do ye not remember?”
—Mark 8:18, KJV
Christ was speaking to people who could physically see what
was happening around them. Their difficulty was not with their eyes. It was
with understanding. They were looking, yet they were not fully seeing.
As I continued thinking about this, I found myself drawn to
the Book of Mormon, where Jacob teaches that the Spirit “speaketh of things as
they really are, and of things as they really will be.” —Jacob 4:13
That verse changed the direction of my thinking. The gospel
does not merely tell us where to look. Through the Spirit, we can learn to see
more truthfully—to see beyond appearances, assumptions, fear, resentment,
disappointment, and even our own limited understanding.
The story of the brass serpent teaches something similar.
The people of Israel had been given a way to be healed: they needed to look.
Alma later reminded his son that “if they would look they might live,” and then
gave the simple counsel, “look to God and live.” —Alma 37:46–47
Sometimes what we need is already before us. The difficulty
may be that we have not yet learned how to see it.
Elder Kim B. Clark, in his October 2015 general conference
message “Eyes to See and Ears to Hear,” taught that through the Holy Ghost we
can receive spiritual eyes to see and ears to hear. As that spiritual capacity
grows, we begin to see the Savior working in our lives more clearly and to see
ourselves, other people, and the world more as He sees them.
That thought has become personal for me.
In my own life, I have spent a great deal of time looking—at
people, circumstances, disappointments, memories, and missed opportunities.
There were times when I believed I understood what I was seeing. Looking back,
I realize that disappointment, resentment, fear, and even pride sometimes
colored my vision.
With spiritual sight, I am learning not merely to see what
stands before me, but to ask what God may be teaching me through it.
An inconvenience can
become a lesson.
An enemy can become a
suffering soul in need of a friend.
A loss can, through
grace, become the beginning of something new.
This does not mean that spiritual sight causes us to deny
pain or pretend that every circumstance is pleasant. It means that we begin to
ask a different question: What might God see here that I am not yet seeing?
A person in addiction may look at his life and see ruin,
while God sees a soul who can still be restored.
A person burdened by guilt may look inward and see only
failure, while Christ sees one for whom He has already made atonement.
A weary disciple may look at the road ahead and see only
hardship, while God sees how endurance is quietly shaping a saint.
And someone we have judged harshly may appear very different
when we begin to wonder what burdens that person is carrying and how the Savior
might see him or her.
How often do we ask God to change our circumstances, when what we may
need just as much is for Him to change our sight?
I believe that is the quiet invitation hidden inside
Thoreau’s words.
The question
is not only: What are you looking at?
The deeper question is: What are you seeing?
To see rightly is a gift. It comes through humility,
honesty, and the quiet influence of the Spirit. It comes as the heart softens.
It comes when we become willing to let God teach us what is truly before us.
The world before us may not change nearly as quickly as the
heart within us. But when the heart is touched by God, even familiar things can
begin to shine with a different meaning.
Sometimes the greatest miracle is not that something new appears before
our eyes, but that at last, by grace, we truly see.
Thank you for your time. I invite
you to leave a comment: What can you see differently today?
🙏
🧘♂️ 💕 🤗
☮️
