Above the Heavens

“O Lord, our Lord, how awesome is your name through all the earth! You have set your majesty above the heavens!” Psalm 8: 2

Today I flew for the first time in a year. In the early morning. Before the sun rose. This was the second time I have ever had the amazing opportunity of watching the sun rise above the heavens. What a marvel of God’s majesty! Below me a field of puffy, billowing clouds as thick as cotton candy as far as the eye could see. And then off in the distance, a slight glimmer of red turning orange. As the color began to faintly light up the early morning darkness, I could begin to see clouds above the clouds, in that space in the sky where the blue of the atmosphere begins to darken into the pitch black of the universe.

These clouds were wispy, like slowly drifting curls of smoke spread across the sky. And interspersed among them were small, puffy clouds with flat bottoms that melted away into the air, like rain clouds. Each changed hue and color as the sun began to break above the fluffy field of white below. As the tip of the sun crested, a rainbow of colors exploded: reds, greens, yellows, violets, blues—each blazing through the darkness as rainbows appeared under each little cloud.

And I thought: what an amazing gift it is to see.

But you know what? There are even greater sights to behold if we would let Jesus take away our blindness: the majesty of the person who’s locker is next to yours at school, or the person in the next cubicle at work, or your cranky relative—or in that person that annoys you the most. What about the person who has hurt you? Can you see their majesty? What about yourself? Where in your life are you in blindness and darkness? I think all of us have an area or two (or more) where we need the healing grace of Christ to set us free, to open our eyes, to bring light into our darkness. As awesome as it was to see that sun rise this morning, it is nothing compared to the majesty of you and me: made in the image of God. Let us strive this Lent to allow Jesus to heal our blindness and give us the gift of sight, to see the world around us, not as much with our eyes, but with our hearts.

Dear Jesus, help me to see myself and others as You do. Heal me of any areas in my life that are blind to Your love, Your grace and Your will. Amen.