Sight and Vision are Two Different Things

This post title is the same title as my sermon for Sunday. I'm trying to not make it into a show and tell regarding my eye problems over the last year. While looking for a quotation to put in the bulletin for Sunday, I came across several options. Here's the one I picked:

Many of us have made our world so familiar that we do not see it any more. It is an interesting question to ask yourself at night: what did I really see this day? You could be surprised at what you did not see…The human eye is always selecting what it wants to see and also evading what it does not want to see. The crucial question then is, what criteria do we use to decide what we like to see and to avoid seeing what we do not want to see? Many limited and negative lives issue directly from this narrowness of vision.

--John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

I almost went with a quotation from the U2 song "When I Look at the World," but I opted against it just because it was difficult to cut down the lyrics to a manageable size and because I thought that perhaps this one would be more meaningful to me than to others. After all it is my favorite band and I'm pretty sure the majority of our congregation is either too old or too young to be into U2. Some day I'll have a worship service that's geared towards Gen X'ers and we can all sing songs like this one:

When you look at the world

What is it that you see?

People find all kinds of things

That bring them to their knees

I see an expression

So clear and so true

That it changes the atmosphere

When you walk into the room

So I try to be like you

Try to feel it like you do

But without you it's no use

I can't see what you see

When I look at the world

When the night is someone elses

And you're trying to get some sleep

When your thoughts are too expensive

To ever want to keep

When there's all kinds of chaos

And everyone is walking lame

You don't even blink now, do you

Or even look away

So I try to be like you

Try to feel it like you do

But without you it's no use

I can't see what you see

When I look at the world

I can't wait any longer

I can't wait till I'm stronger

Can't wait any longer

To see what you see

When I look at the world

I'm in the waiting room

Can't see for the smoke

I think of you and your holy book

While the rest of us choke

Tell me, tell me, what do you see?

Tell me, tell me, what’s wrong with me

Grace and Peace,

Chase