When he looked out over the crowds, his heart broke. He taught in their meeting places, reported kingdom news, and healed their diseased bodies, healed their bruised and hurt lives. “Then Jesus made a circuit of all the towns and villages. But when I return to the comfort of my 450 square foot apartment of Cubao, I am again riveted on my own concerns, both great and infinitesimal. These experiences should have brought me to a place beyond myself-a new global coordinate of empathy and compassion. I have kissed wide-eyed Liberian orphans in the outskirts of Monrovia. I have smiled at the sad faces of child beggars outside my taxi in Manila.
I have shared meals of grub worms and rice wine in the huts of the poorest of the poor tribal people groups on the borders of China and Myanmar. I live in Asia, and am daily in contact with the juxtapositions of wealth and poverty, the sharp contrasts of hope and desperation. I ludicrously become the focal point of the universe and all its macro realities. I squint to see beyond the Milky Way, the earth, my own geometric coordinates.
I struggle to comprehend God’s rendition of the universe and all it’s nuances. I am fixated on lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburch’s beige hat. I cannot see the overall details of shadows and motion in Rembrandt’s colossal The Night Watch. I become enamored in the swirly globs of oil paint. I cannot see the beauty of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in Van Gogh’s Starry Night. The farther the object, the greater the likeliness of double vision.īut the physical condition of myopia is not my only problem. I have an astigmatism in my left eye, and the onset of Keratoconus. “Oh my God! How could I have overlooked this once again?” My earth-drawn brow lifts, and I raise my gaze to the level of the horizon opposite Jesus. There is a high contrast, heavy color saturation, and Instagram-esque focal blur on everything but the face of the Savior, pushing the scenery into the distance, pulling his expression closer toward the viewer. Beads of perspiration gather on his forehead, as the canvas of the sky bursts and shifts in slow motion. “These fields are ripe! It’s harvest time!”Ī thin layer of sunlight sits atop the crisp tips of cumulous clouds above the Galilean. I can almost hear the guttural crackle of passion in Jesus’s voice as he says, “Open your eyes and take a good look at what’s right in front of you!” His eyes are aflame with a joyous secret that we had not realized before.
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