“Man sees the appearance but the Lord looks into the heart.” I recall once being so captivated in the middle of an Alaskan city by a snowcapped mountain. The waterfalls were not particularly impressive but nevertheless, beautiful. From a distance, one could not hear the water flowing but if you listened carefully by listening to it from your heart, you might have heard water flowing. That day, many individuals simply walked pass the scene photographing the city sites, taking pictures of themselves or just breezed by in conversation taking no notice as if the mountain was invisible, perhaps just one of the buildings or not worth the time, a glance or a look. It stopped me in my tracks. As vehicles passed by, I found myself just looking, wondering, taking it all in as if the mountain was speaking directly to me. I saw beauty, beheld goodness, saw truth but the mountain appeared sad, weeping as if wanting to be seen, noticed, heard. After several moments of stillness and silence, the city and all its noise disappeared. I realized that I was smiling and crying at the same time. I felt somehow at that instance, God captured my undivided attention. As I beheld God’s creation with such awe and wonder, I could sense and feel God’s merciful gaze looking upon me and able to penetrate and pierce my inmost heart and being. Through this mountain, God touched me with His eyes. Seeing God seeing me caused the inner coldness in me to be warmed by a smile and the inner sadness and weeping in me to be flooded with great joy. God looks into the heart. He invites us to take a moment and to do the same. We often see things on the outside by what we see or notice. However, we know looks are deceiving. We all have heard you cannot judge a book by its cover, yet we usually do. We project ourselves onto the image we see. Our vision skewed and impaired by our own limitations, by our own weaknesses, and our own insecurities causes us to be blind to God’s beauty, goodness, and truth in one another. We can misjudge by appearances and fail to see the hurt and weeping of another caused by coldness, indifference, humiliation, abuse, or neglect. We may miss seeing the pain or the suffering Christ in one another because the appearance was not impressive or beautiful like a snowcapped mountain or how we would see, judge, or perceive ourselves. God simply sees Him in you.
