Eyes on the unseen
The lasting things
Two people stand at the same window, looking out at the same world, and they are not seeing the same thing. The first sees only the surface, the things that can be counted and touched and lost: the figures that rise and fall, the structures that crack, the bodies that age, the whole shifting visible world that the last few years have taught them is far less solid than it looked. The second is looking through all of that to something underneath, the realities that do not shift, that were here before the surface and will outlast it, the things faith makes as solid as stone though no eye has ever seen them. Same window. Same world. Two utterly different ways of seeing. Paul, who had watched everything he once counted on come apart, made the deliberate choice between them and named it: we look not at the things that are seen, but at the things that are not seen, because the seen is temporary and the unseen is eternal. The long reconnection has been training the eyes for exactly this turn, and here it hands the gaze on toward what comes next.
“We don't look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are not seen are eternal.”
— Paul, to the Corinthians — 2 Corinthians 4:18 (WEB)
“Now faith is assurance of things hoped for, proof of things not seen.”
Reconnect reaches its threshold here and turns toward what is next. The re-rooted, remade life lifts its gaze from the shakable surface to the eternal beneath, the final pivot the whole movement was bending toward. Two ways of seeing the same world; faith chooses the unseen and lasting. This is reconnection completing its work, training the eyes for the very thing the coming days unfold: what cannot be shaken.
The upheaval taught you one lesson you could not have learned any gentler way: how much of the visible can be shaken. Things you thought were bedrock turned out to be surface, and when they cracked, you learned the hard difference between what passes and what lasts. Paul takes that costly lesson and turns it into a discipline of sight: look not at the things that are seen, which are temporary, but at the things that are not seen, which are eternal. Faith, says Hebrews, makes those unseen things solid, the assurance of what is hoped for.
This is where the whole reconnecting season has been quietly leading, teaching your eyes to lift past the shakable surface to the lasting realities beneath, the things that, Hebrews says, faith makes solid, the assurance of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen. And here this movement comes to its threshold and begins to hand you on. Everything you can see will, in the end, pass away or be shaken. The remade soul has learned where to fix its gaze instead, on what cannot be shaken at all, which is exactly where the road ahead is about to lead. Lift your eyes, and keep walking toward it.
The Church can fix entirely on the visible, the numbers, the buildings, the cultural standing, the shifting surface of success, and be devastated before a watching world when those things shake. Paul trains the gaze elsewhere, toward the unseen and eternal, which faith makes solid. As the present upheaval shakes Western and global Christianity and the measurable signs of strength crack, the Body is tempted to mistake the loss of the visible for the loss of everything. It is not. The one Church that keeps its eyes on the lasting realities, holding the visible loosely, is not destroyed when the surface gives way. The recurring rummage sale Phyllis Tickle traced removes what was only surface so the Body can fix on what endures, the discipline of sight the very next season of its life will require.
What cannot be shaken is the unseen itself, the eternal realities that were here before the visible and will stand when it is gone. Faith does not invent them; it sees them, and counts them more solid than the surface that fooled you. Everything you can touch is on its way to passing. What endures is exactly what no eye can see, and that is where the soul has finally learned to look, and where the road now turns.
- What did I once count as bedrock that the shaking revealed to be only surface?
- Where are my eyes actually fixed today, on the things that are passing or the things that last?
- What unseen and eternal reality could I let faith make solid for me as I step into what comes next?
Lord, the shaking taught me how little of what I see can be trusted to last; what I called bedrock was only surface. So teach me Paul's discipline of sight: to look past the seen, which is passing, to the unseen, which is eternal. Let faith make those lasting things solid to me, more real than the surface that failed. Lift my eyes from what can be shaken to what cannot, and lead me on toward it. Amen.