New Site

Dear friends,
I have begun blogging on my new web site. www.bethratzlaff.com.

Come on over and see what's new! enter your email in the subscribe button to continue to receive my posts via email.
Thanks!
Beth

Seeing Between the Blinks of the Eye

My father once said that the seeing of God is not like the seeing of man. Man sees only between the blinks of his eyes. He does not know what the world is like during the blinks. He sees the world in pieces, in fragments. But the Master of the Universe sees the world whole, unbroken. That world is good. Our seeing is broken, Asher Lev. Can we make it like the seeing of God? Is that possible?

Chiam Potok - The Gift of Asher Lev

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.  1 Cor. 13:12 ESV

There is a piece of artwork displayed in the art gallery of my mind. Regretfully, I do not have the skill with either camera or paint to take it from my mind and reproduce it for you out in the open. I will try to sketch it roughly with words.

It is a picture of a mosaic constructed from mirrored fragments. The bright mirrored pieces are separated by dark opaque spaces. Reflected in the mirrors is a face, fractured and distorted by the dark cracks between the mirrors.

That is life for a human in this age. This world is broken. All we see is reflected in that broken mirror, fractured by the cracks.

Sometimes even the light reflected in the mosaic is indistinct in my vision. All I can see is the negative space, the darkness in between. I see broken relationships, sealed with anger. I see broken bodies, wracked with pain. I see souls imprisoned, sentenced to the solitary confinement of loneliness. I see hate and even worse, apathy. I see cruelty. I see evil, though I can only bear to see it for a second before I close my mind to its horror. There is One does not close his eyes to these things, not even to blink.

Sometimes I focus on the reflected light. A fragment of a small child's unselfconscious delight in his mommy, a shard of shared laughter, a chunk of pure intimacy. There is One who sees all this, and all else. He sees without the dark cracks, without distortion because he is the Word "who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty."   (Rev.1:8, ESV)

It is possible, at least partially possible, to see through someone else's eyes. It happens most notably with old people, husbands and wives who love each other well over two lifetimes. As the end of their time together draws to a close, sometimes they glimpse the world as the other sees it, before a dark crack of noise, or hunger, or pain breaks the view. We can see clearly, for a moment, if we see through the eyes of the Alpha and Omega. If we get quiet, and spend a lot of time in His presence, we sometimes glimpse the world as He sees it.

He not only sees fully, He knows fully. He gazes in person, at the explosion of a supernova, as bright as a billion suns. With his naked eye he sees the empty space between the nucleus of an atom and its electrons orbiting. He sees, unblinking, what is. He knows without glancing away what was. He gazes unaided at the brilliant light that is to come. He sees you fully, too. He knows intimately every atom of your being, the light, the dark.

Someday we will see like that.

Someday, we will see fully. Someday we will know fully even as we have been fully known.

Seeing: the Lens

"It's not about where you are, but how you see."
-Nature Photographer Marc Adamus


All of life is about how you see.
Each of us needs a lens to see properly.
The lens of the Father's love,
Christ's sacrifice,
the Spirit's care.

Without the lens it doesn't matter where we are. We are lost.

With the lens, it doesn't matter where we are. We are in His hand.