Seeing And Looking
By Michael
Pemberton
"Seeing then that all these things shall
be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and
godliness, looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein
the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with
fervent heat?" -II Peter
3:11-12
I have always
loved to get the mail. I don't know why,
I just do. Maybe it's the mystery. One
day when I was in high school, I got some mail in a very official looking
envelope. My heart raced as I carefully cut it open. It was an invitation to a dinner for
prospective engineering students. I was
shocked!
I never was
all that great a student, and math was my worst subject in high school. Yet somehow I ended up in Algebra II with Mr.
Jolla in my senior year. And I was doing
poorly, very poorly. So I figured there
must have been some mistake about the invitation. But I was curious, so I RSVP'd and arranged
transportation.
Of course, I
felt out of place when all the smartest people I knew showed up at that
dinner. There were presentations about
the roles of engineers in society and what the different branches of engineering
were about. There were college
catalogues and degree programs from local and state colleges. There were actual engineers from the
community. By the time we were half way
through the evening, I was even more convinced there'd been a mistake. So I approached the MC and asked about
it. He calmly looked me up and down and
checked his list. "Nope. No
mistake. A Mr. Jolla referred you." I could not believe my ears! Why on earth?
So I was
quick to ask him about it after the next class.
"Yes I did," was his reply. Why?
"'Cause I think you'll make a fine engineer."
But I'm flunking your class! "Don't worry about that. You'll do fine." I shook my head and walked
away.
Don't you
know that I thought about that many years later when I graduated with a degree
in Engineering? How could he
know?
Well, by this
time in life we have all learned that there are some things we just "see" that
others do not. We see them because we've
been prepared to see them. Like what the
Apostle Peter says in today's text. Not
everybody can see that this world is temporary.
In fact, sometimes we're prone to lose sight of that ourselves, no matter how much we believe it. When we do see it, it's because we were
willing to look through the eyes of God's word.
The results of Mr. Jolla looking through the eyes of a teacher were that
he saw potential that I couldn't see no matter how hard I looked. And I was so sure he was wrong. There is no doubt in my mind that our
heavenly father sees some things in us that we could never find by
searching. He found something in you he
loved so much that he sent his only son to die for your sins so that you
wouldn't have to.
The question
is, what do YOU see?
Do you see a need in someone's life?
Perhaps you see God working in someone who is absolutely certain God has
abandoned them. Or maybe you see the
devil working in someone's life when all they see is their own failure. You may see some things nobody could guess
at.But Mr. Jolla
didn't stop there, neither did God and neither should
you. After he "saw" he "Looked". Mr. Jolla looked for a way to encourage a
very discouraged student with some hidden potential. God looked for a way to make a son out of
someone who was his enemy. Peter says
that after we "see" this world for what it is, we should "look" for some other
things. The fact of seeing leaves us
with the responsibility to looking. So
now, seeing what you do see, what are you going to look for as a
result?
By the way, I
love being a very busy engineer. In
fact, I am a very busy engineer because I love it so much. Start looking
today.
