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The Eyes of Love
1 John 4:8 says, “Anyone who does not love does not know God for God is
love.” The message is clear the person who demonstrates little love or compassion, betrays the smallness of their relationship
with God. When God’s love invades our life and slays all the old distorted images of ourselves; it
makes us acceptable, lovable and capable, and invites us to share that same love with others.
In Mark 12 when Jesus is asked
about the greatest commandment, he responds, “Love the Lord with all your being, and love your neighbor as yourself.”
The message is clear – God desires for us to love others with the same passion that we love God and ourselves.
In Luke 13:10-13 Jesus provides a living description of what this
love for others looks like:“On the Sabbath Jesus
was teaching in one of the synagogues. A woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent
over and couldn’t straighten up at all. When Jesus saw her He called her forward and said to her, ‘Woman, you
are set free from your infirmity.’ Then He put His hands on her and immediately she straightened up and praised God.’”
From this powerful encounter, we discover three ways of Seeing Others as God Sees Them.
ACTUALLY SEE THE PEOPLE AROUND YOU. - This
scene has Jesus in the synagogue surrounded by a large crowd, teaching from the Torah. In the crowd is a woman severely crippled
for 18 years. The text says Jesus saw her – “locked eyes on her” and was moved with compassion. One of the
unique aspects of the Christian Faith is the powerful message that the God of creation loves you, notices you, cares for you.
In Matthew 10:30, “He pays even greater attention to you, down to the last detail—even numbering the hairs on
your head!” – Sadly there is no promise that God will replace the hair, but at least He notices, has them numbered.
Matthew 9:36, describes Jesus’ compassion for others: “When He looked out over the crowds His heart broke so confused
and aimless they were like sheep without a shepherd.”
Let’s look at two aspects of actually seeing others. - First, there are people in our daily lives longing to be noticed. On the surface they may appear successful and financially
set with the perfect family…but beneath the surface they’re as crippled as the woman -- a brokenness seen only
by eyes of grace and love. These persons construct walls of protection to hide their sense of being unacceptable and unlovable;
but Jesus calls us to a life of noticing them as a child of God – exactly the way God’s sees us.
- Second, to truly notice people you have to slow down. There isn’t a single time in the gospels when Jesus is hurried.
He was ushering God’s kingdom into the world and yet he was never too busy to notice those around him. It is a fact
of life that you can see people as you speed by at 75 miles per hour, but you can only see them as a caricature of themselves,
without texture, individuality or uniqueness. To truly see people as they are, you have to slow the pace of your life.
I don’t know about you, but one of the major sins of my life is
busyness. One of the axioms of life – an axiom my life has demonstrated too frequently, is painfully present too often
today, “If the devil can’t make you bad, he will make you busy.” Sadly, I have found that once I become
too busy, I make myself bad, without a great deal of assistance from the demonic…
TAKE THE RISK OF ENGAGING OTHERS
Luke 13 says that Jesus not only saw her, He took the risk of speaking to her even
in opposition to the cultural protocol of the day. It was absolutely inappropriate for a Rabbi to speak to
a strange woman in public or private; and there was nothing in synagogue worship that allowed for
singling out anyone, especially a woman. Seeing people as God sees them is risky stuff! Everything about
our information culture screams -- stay distant, disengaged and isolated so you don’t get hurt. But
Jesus declares through his life we are to live in the middle of a broken, hurtful, even dangerous world risking
active, engaging love. C.S. Lewis, said, “To love at all is to be vulnerable.” If your goal in
life is to protect your heart then never love. But Jesus embodied a different love ethic, Matthew 5:46-47
“If you love only the people who love you, you will get no reward. Even the tax collectors do that.
And if you are nice only to your friends, you are no better than other people. Even those who don’t
know God are nice to their friends. Pastor Macharia tells the story of flying from Nairobi
to Mombasa and unable to sleep in the middle of the night. Pastor Macharia got up went down stairs in his hotel and decided
to take a walk in the neighborhood. He noticed a restaurant/bar down the street and decided go down for a cup of coffee. When he entered the restaurant (at 3:00AM) the only people there were the guy behind the counter and
a group of ladies sitting at a table. As Pastor Macharia sort-of eavesdropped on their conversation, he discovered that they
were prostitutes. One of them, named Agnes, was telling the other ladies that she was going to have a birthday tomorrow, and
that she had never, in her life, had a birthday party. When the ladies left, Pastor Macharia went to the guy behind the counter
and discovered these ladies came in the same time every night. So he asked if he could throw a birthday party for Agnes the
next night. Here’s how Pastor Macharia describes what happened the next night:
- “At 2:30 AM I was back at the diner.
I’d picked up some crape paper decorations at the store and had made a sign out of big pieces of cardboard that read
“Happy Birthday, Agnes!” The woman that did the cooking at the diner must have gotten the word out on the street
because at 3:15 AM every prostitute in Honolulu was in the place. It was wall-to-wall prostitutes and me — the preacher!
At 3:30 AM the door of the restaurant swung open and in came Agnes and her friends. I had everybody poised and ready. And
when she came in we all screamed, “Happy birthday!”Never have I seen a person so flabbergasted in my life. Her mouth fell open, her legs buckled, and when we finished
singing her eyes moistened. And when we brought out the cake she started to sob. But she didn’t want anybody to eat
the cake. She wanted to keep it as a memory of the fact that she’d had a birthday party. She said she lived just around
the corner and she was going to take the cake right then to her house. She walked out and we were so stunned she left we didn’t
know what to do, so I just led the group in a prayer. It was the only thing I knew to do. So I prayed for Agnes that she would
come to Christ and her life would be different and she would have a great birthday.”
When Pastor Macharia finished his prayer, the guy behind the counter said, “Hey, you never said you were a preacher.
What kind of church do you belong to?” Tony answered, “I belong to the kind of church that throws parties for
prostitutes at 3:30 in the morning.” The guy sneered and said, “No you don’t. There’s no church like that, because if there was one, I’d join it! Jesus always
lavished grace on people who were put down, used up or left behind; he risked seeing them as children of God.
REACHOUT WITH
GOD’S LOVE : - Love is not love until it is given
away, until we reach out and touch others with the same depth of love and grace with which God touched us -- through someone
else. Friends, there is not a single person you will meet in life, regardless of their personality, brokenness or ugly attitude
that is not a child of God!
- Every hand you shake, every person you pass on the street, every set of eyes you lock onto
belong to someone for whom Christ died. And that same Christ gives you the privilege of reaching out to that child with God’s
grace.
- In Luke 13:10-13, Jesus didn’t just see the woman and risk engaging her, he reached out to
her. The message? Love reaches out! Love touches regardless of the situation. Jesus always demonstrated love by the kindness
of touch; kindness we are to share with others: “Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another,
just as God through Christ has forgiven you.” Ephesians 4:3
- Later in Luke 13:15
Jesus calls the woman a daughter of Abraham, not a crippled woman, but a daughter of the most significant figure in Jewish
history!
- The essence of reaching out is declaring those we touch to be a child of God, convincing them through
our compassion that God loves them, that they are important.
God has called us to get up close to people who are hurting and broken and through our lives sing to them the message
of a God who loves them, a God who cherishes them, a God who will never let them go.
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