Hello, God. It's me, Mara.

         You know, Lord, now and then friends share with us things that are special to them. One gal shared that a long while ago, Pastor “Phil” (name changed) was telling them that: “Listening is not hearing. Touching is not feeling. Looking is not seeing. There is the sense and the sensibility. The former is our body’s proper functioning. The latter is our “will to awareness.”

Then she went on explain that we involuntarily might listen, but we all know that we hear only by intention; she then gave a couple examples in her life, that she had missed the point. Humm — don’t we all do that — occasionally? We shared how we probably don’t look ahead because we don’t wish to see any signs contesting our own desires, we only see what we want to see; kind of makes us blind, we decided.

As we chatted, she said, “Once upon a time, we men and women had eyes that were willing to see. Recall when we looked on a crowd and we saw our neighbors, not strangers? Remember when we looked across a valley, we saw hills, valleys, fertile earth and not just the dam?” Then she asked: “Oh, remember, girl, when we looked on that flock of starlings, and we willed to see ourselves likewise as fragile and vulnerable?”

You know, Lord, once upon a time, we willingly noted the whole and we lived as if You, Lord God, were the source of all, but then what happened? We all went blind. We read about the blind man in Mark, 10:51, “My teacher, let me see again.”

Perhaps we should be like that blind man and stop for a moment and think about what has blinded us to the goodness of the whole earth, and pray, “Oh, Lord, I will to hear, to feel, to see again.”

Love, Mara.