I had a gig on the 11th floor of a glassy downtown building. I stood at the windows and watched construction workers do their thing in a building climbing next door. Then I my eyes climbed up layers of trees diminishing in the haze of distance.
From a perspective from above, like an angel might have, I realized all this felt like just a stage, a testing ground, a crucible to see what comes out of people when they're put in different situations.
We're used to seeing this world from our eyes as a place we can manipulate to appease our desires and decrease our pain. But how different is it to see that all this is setting, it's scaffolding. It's all props. It's all fire that reveals the beauty and impurities bubbling up from within us. It is the stage we are all given to perform on, or be tested on.
How would this change our actions if totally visible to the heavenly realm was how we spend our time, the judgement with which we slay others as we drive, the tone with which we talk to those we live with, corners we cut on our taxes, and what we do in our lonely moments.
But don't get stuck on it being a magnifying lens to show all our flaws. The reason this whole matrix is worth it is ultimately because it is a stage which can produce the depths of beauty God has planted in the human heart. Things movies are made of. Things that generous people are made heroes for. Attitudes we can barely muster when no one is looking, but that God sees that makes the whole world worth it.
It is an opportunity every day, every situation to add beauty to the world it has never seen before.
Raw Spoon, September 20, 2023
