When did we see you Lord?

We thought we saw you on Sunday mornings, exalted in our praises. We though we saw you in the underlined sections of our Bibles. We thought we saw you when our cause succeeded.  We though we saw you when we got a raise or our kids turned out well.

These are the things we see, the things that arrest our attention. It is here, because here is where we look, that we thought we saw you.

But we are reminded of your claim that we saw you in things and in people to whom we pay no attention. Who knew that you were the hungry person? Who knew that you were the naked person? Or the one with HIV/AIDS? Or the stranger? Or the prisoner?

But there you were.

And we have to confess that when we saw these people we thought, “sinner, freeloader, burden, terrorist.” We confess we did not recognize these people as your glorious disguise.

And knowing that you were indeed in these places, with these people–knowing that if we had bothered to look, we would have see you there–we now realize that we are the sinners. By failing to see you, we saw a reflection of ourselves. We are the very people we thought them to be: sinner, burden, freeloader, terrorist. Surely they are bearing along with you our infirmities and our diseases.

Oh God, have mercy on us. Help us to see you rightly. Give us holy imagination so that we can see those places in the world that you have hidden yourself in glory.

Amen.