When our pioneering forefathers first came to America they credited the Indians with phenomenal eyesight. While the white man only saw the leaves of a tree, an Indian could see a squirrel’s eye. While the white man could only spot the branches of a tree, it was the red man that could spot the antlers of a deer in a thicket.
But as the white men started hunting like the Red Men they discovered that their eyesight was as good as that of Indians. Indians eyes had never been physically better than the colonists’ eyes; Indians just simply knew what they were looking for and how to look. They were intent on finding a squirrel and not leaves, deer and not branches, and they weren’t going to let leaves and branches distract them. It was basically the Indian’s interest rather than his visual aptitude that made his eyesight so keen. When the white man developed the same interest, they found they had the same capacity for seeing.
In matters of religion, as everywhere else in life, the secret of success is attentiveness based upon interest. It’s this attentiveness that saves us from the poverty of unawareness. We go about the world unconscious of the goodness and glory that is all around us and unaware of the God who is so near us. Perhaps it is because God is always near that we miss noticing Him until we are desperate for Him.
Living in water, a fish might miss the meaning of water, while seeking its food and escaping its enemies. Living in God, we miss God while making a living, seeking our comforts and our pleasures. Let your prayer today be, God make us aware of you!
