Learning to see with spiritual eyes

The last two day’s blogs have explored how we inadvertently mistake stewardship for ownership when we are stewards of something for a long time. Jesus combated this tendency in his disciples by destabilizing them, moving them from place to place. In so doing, they learned to begin thinking first as kingdom citizens. The process took three solid years and for most modern Jesus-followers, it needs to take longer.

A blog reader brought up a good point: while moving from place to place may be necessary as a pedagogical tool, it has a decided downside as a lifestyle. The downside is that it can prevent us from developing intimate relationships. How do you grow close to people if you know that you’re going to be moving on soon?

We Western Jesus-followers struggle so much with intimacy as it is, a mobile lifestyle can make it much harder to commit and be vulnerable. Even staying in one place is no guarantee that you’ll easily bond with others. For example, although our family has made some great friends, frankly, this is something we have struggled with in northern Georgia. We can count the number of invitations we’ve gotten to locals’ homes on two hands. Many of you who have gone thru a series of moves may be able to relate.

Jesus never gave us a model of what life in a neighborhood over time might be like. But he did give us a great model of a discipleship process, one that asked his followers to leave everything for a season so they might learn to see with spiritual eyes. After getting married, Karen and I moved to Indonesia with a couple of suitcases and a trunk. Later, we moved to the Dominican Republic. Each time, we were gloriously unencumbered and free to trust God.

Now that we’re approaching our empty nest season, we sense that God may be asking us to “lighten our load” again. But I’d make that tradeoff in a second to increase my spiritual vision. I aspire to the kind of vision Paul describes in the first chapter of Ephesians: “your eyes focused and clear, so that you can see exactly what he is calling you to do…”

Those of us who would follow Jesus in a radical way must at some crazy point in our lives throw caution to the wind and carve out some extended time to leave distractions of the familiar and predictable behind in order to better learn to see the kingdom with spiritual eyes. That’s the only way it comes into focus.