Seeing Through Jesus' Eyes
We all have things that happen in life that shape us. After my second year of college, I joined a short-term missions organization to participate in an evangelistic outreach program in France. During that summer I got to know a few people who had returned from working with outreach teams in India. The prospect intrigued me, and I felt the Lord nudging me in that direction. So off I went on an overland trip from Belgium to India in a truck that would be used by a team of Indians to reach out to small towns and villages.
Fast forward to two years later, having returned to Belgium to help prepare a new group of young people excited about going to India. I was asked, “Do you miss India?” I was not prepared to answer that question. While we could find the basic creature comforts in the cities, the small towns where we worked were a different story. Getting safe drinking water was nearly impossible. The food was very spicy hot. So, I lived with a digestive system in constant rebellion. Malaria and hepatitis were lurking foes that some of us succumbed to. Grinding poverty was in our face every day, with little possibility of doing much about it. To eat, we needed to sell Christian books to Hindus and Muslims. Not evident! The spiritual darkness and hostility of these places seemed to invade our hearts and souls. I was often the only foreigner on a team of young Indians. I felt lonely and often misunderstood. Did I miss rural India? It was hard to give an encouraging answer to eager young people embarking on an adventure. I probably responded with a few unconvincing spiritual cliches.
That night I didn’t sleep much. For hours I saw images of the small-town people among whom I had lived, but from a different perspective. It was like I was seeing through different eyes. I was seeing people burdened by poverty with no exit, burdened with religion that gave no hope and oppressed in their social contexts. When morning came, I realized that the Shepherd had been showing me how he views what I had lived through. I had often seen these people around me as scenery. The Shepherd saw them as individuals, each with a story, each with deep needs that only he could meet. “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” Mat 9:36. He was calling me to see people as he sees them and to respond to them in his way.
Did I then miss rural India? Probably not at that point. It had been hard. But beginning to see people as Jesus sees them shaped my decisions as I finished school and launched with Emma into service in the Muslim world. Have I needed to be continually reminded to see people as Jesus sees them rather than being scenery around me? Certainly! Seeing people through the Shepherd’s eyes has been one of the things that has kept me going in Christian service.