LOOK

We had no kindergarten in my rural school of Granger, Missouri, where the first six grades merely filled one room.  Three girls and I began first grade together.  I was pumped as Mrs. T. C. Smith began to teach us to read.  I still remember with great sentiment the yellow cloth-like small book; Dick and Jane.

The first word I learned to read stood alone on the very first page.  Look!

I learned much later in life that this word is spiritually embedded with a dynamic that won't quit.  As a matter of fact, the word implies that one LOOK continually and perpetually.

I don't understand our various impulses, directives, and drives.  But I know I am driven by His Spirit to see people.  Preaching and teaching were elements where I had to painfully and repeatedly (still) labor.  Seeing people is a spiritually easy encounter for me.

I see, watch, and study people everywhere I am because everywhere I am there are wonderful people.

God, though, taught me to LOOK at those around me with a faith in what they can become.  Too many do not like who they are, where they are, and what they are. And, they are clueless that God would have any interest or skill in making them into a new person more satisfying than their best imagination...Eph. 3:20.

Some in the church have reversed the power of LOOK.  These use their eyes for self-satisfaction.  Is the church going the way I think it should?  Are the leaders saying the things I like?  These tend to look for signals of church life going their way for their pleasure.

When we transfer our LOOKing power, a new world opens to us like a blooming rose. We begin to see need coupled with what can be.  One of the most exciting and life-altering truths of God is His call for us to walk by faith and not by sight.  Our natural flesh eyes cannot do a good job of LOOKing with hope at others.

We tend to see them critically.  This causes us to blame instead of assist.

But when we shift to the faith-eyes, this new world of possibility and hope for others who struggle arises immediately.

LOOK was my first readable word.  The dynamics of that word fills my heart to this day with an energy literally out of this world!  I would encourage you that LOOK wasn't given to us only as safety training in crossing a street.  It was given to us to change the world of the down and out.

We are called to see riches for others who have not yet known God is calling them to also LOOK.

Do you SEE what I mean?