God Sees

One of the fun things about being an adult in a middle school was catching the kids in all kinds of moments they didn't think anyone was watching. I'd just be walking down the hallway and end up walking right through some crazy handshake, some weird dance-off, some conversation that doesn't make sense unless you happen to be 12 years old. 

One of the challenges was knowing that no matter what I came upon, I may still have missed something. It's the moment you catch a normally good kid doing something totally out of character, but you missed whatever the bully did that provoked her. You see a kid ripping some toy out of another kid's hands, and it's tempting to want to step in and correct the behavior, but what you missed was that the other kid ripped the toy out someone else's hands first. It can be a lot of pressure to think you're the witness. 

It takes a lot of humility to confess that you might not know everything about what you see. 

(Honestly, I don't even know anything about any of the handshakes that I saw.) 

And I confess there have been many times in my life where I have wanted to defend myself, too. Where I have been caught in half-a-story, in a scene that doesn't quite portray the truth of what's been going on. Where what I'm seen doing doesn't seem to make any sense, but if you only had a little more context.... 

One of the comforts that we give ourselves when the world wrongly judges us is that "God knows." God knows what's really going on. God knows our hearts. God understands the whole situation. 

He saw everything. 

The prophet Jonah confirms this. God sees what people do, he says (3:10). 

God sees the thing that started it all. He sees the quiet moments that put it all in perspective. He knows what one thing has led to another. 

God sees the thing that looks totally out of character, and He knows how you got here. He doesn't have to confess He might have missed something; He saw it all. 

But what's cool about this is that God sees my good moments, too. He sees my goofy moments. He hears the little joke that makes me smile. He witnesses the secret handshake that maybe I'm just working on with myself. He sees the little bounce in my step when I'm trying something new. 

It's cool to think that as many neat moments as I've had walking the halls of a school, God has those moments all the time. And He has them in my life. 

It makes me think about what I want Him to catch me doing. What I want Him to see. It makes me think about what it means to be walking the same hallways of this world as God Himself does and knowing that at any moment, He might see something I wasn't even thinking anyone might be watching. That He might hear something that only makes sense if you've lived my life. 

Impromptu dance-off!