Look to God and Live… Joyfully!

The lyrics of a beloved children’s hymn state:

These beautiful inspirational words can help promote a sense of self-worth and divine potential for those who internalize them. I love this song and always have, ever since I was a child. My beloved childhood eye doctor’s mother wrote these lyrics, and they have always been very special.

I had a new thought this morning, though. What if, on this Civil Rights/Martin Luther King Day we used these words to look outward instead of inward? What if we applied them more universally? How would this change our perspective?

            YOU are a child of God

            And He has sent YOU here

Often it is easy to look at those who are different than ourselves and view them through a more critical lens than we would use for ourselves. When it comes to people who are different culturally, racially, socially, or in any other way we frequently dislike them, fight them, and sometimes even harm them. This can be individually or by characterizing whole groups through employing impersonal stereotypes and preconceived prejudices. How nice would it be if we were able to take the time truly see people through a different lens – through God’s lens instead of ours!

The great theologian C.S. Lewis said:

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”

On this day set aside to focus on where we are as a people on implementing and ensuring civil rights, I hope that we will take the time to search our hearts, look outward beyond our own lives, and see what things we can do to see people as God sees them. Where are our blind spots, our personal pitfalls? I suspect that as we spend time taking honest stock on how we see and treat others that we will find things we can do to improve. I hope that we would then take that knowledge and put our ideas of change into practice. If we have prejudices, we must lay them aside. If we have been injured, we must forgive. If we have hatred, we must pray for our enemies until our hatred turns to love.

St. Francis of Assisi, prayed:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

What the world needs now is less hate. It needs less anger. It needs less strife. At the risk of sounding clichéd, what this world, torn apart by suspicion and antagonism, really needs in the here and now is love, for as Dr. Martin Luther King said, “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.”

One of the best ways to do this transforming of enemy to friend is by looking at others, one-by-one, with new eyes, knowing and believing that all those around us are indeed children of God, that we all have been sent to earth for a divine purpose, and that together, walking and learning, we can all return to Him one day.