Invisible God:
When we seek your face,
Your eyes pooled with love, grace, wisdom, and tears,
For recognition of our bottomless questions, doubts, and fears,
We search a mirror by mistake,
Probing our own eyes fear-filled,
Rooting for wisdom in the lines furrowing our finite faces.
Yes, you appear there,
The Imago Dei,
But an image blurred.
In a darkened mirror,
We glimpse an impoverished
Strand of your light,
A solitary, broken shard,
A lonely facet of your diverse prism.
Unseen God of the unseen:
When we seek your face,
Break the mirror;
Throw wide the window;
Lift our eyes beyond;
That we may see you
In faces other,
Ebony, walnut, peach,
Faces care-creased,
Injustice-scarred,
Naiveté-polished,
Fear-masked,
Beauty-marred.
Faces divergent and disagreeing.
Creator of all:
Bring to the fore the colors lost in the corners
Of your diverse, artistic, and complex
Masterpiece of humanity.
Arrest our gaze with the
Brushstrokes unnoticed, un-admired, even disdained.
Grant us holy wonder as we seek your face,
Your splendor in other faces,
Other places,
As different from our own,
As Van Gough from Monet.
this poses an interesting challenge for me,… because not only does “Creation” reveal to us the Glory of God ~ “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse” (Romans 1:20) ~ but simultaneously, “Creation” also reveals to us our “need” for God,… “to be made whole”, not only our eyes, but also our hearts, need the infilling of God’s grace and truly loving Spirit, in order to reveal the intrinsic unity that God would wish for us,… “All we like sheep have gone astray;
We have turned, every one, to his own way …” (Isaiah 53:6)
as we gaze on God’s multiple and varied Creation, let us pray for the Great Shepherd to help mend our hearts and minds, and turn us back to the path that leads us to Him, and thus unity with one another,…