What Do You Not See?

I (Bill) was having a conversation with a White friend in her 70s recently who said that she had not learned about the Civil Rights movement until the last decade. She’d just happened to have missed Brown vs. Board of Education, Martin Luther King Jr., Bloody Sunday… and a few other people and major events in U.S. history. And then I was processing with Katy later and realized that I feel like I’ve read the Bible a lot over the past few decades and have still missed God’s heart for justice and God’s priority on the poor.

That’s when it struck me how easy it is to simply ‘not see’ things. Of course, it’s a lot easier to ‘not see’ things when that not seeing protects your comfort, your retirement savings, and your position in society, right?

Jesus quoted Isaiah in Matthew 13, and then James riffed off it again a decade or so later. Listen in on these verses and ask yourself: What have you seen but not paid attention to? What have you heard God say but haven’t truly listened to? Bonus questions: Whose stories have you ignored? What have you been protecting by how you’ve shielded your eyes and ears?

You have seen many things, but you pay no attention; your ears are open, but you do not listen. - Isaiah 42:20

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. - James 1:22.