Seeing is believing

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“Seeing isn’t believing, it’s just seeing!” These are the words from the 1800s poet, writer, and Christian minister, George MacDonald. We can’t go through a thought without a belief affecting it. Facts are educated to the point of taking someone else’s study and trusting it because it makes logical sense to us personally and relationally. We all choose to believe in something and the irony is, if we don’t choose, we’ve made our choice.

Forgiveness is like the eye, and love opens that eye. Jesus said if your eye is good, your body will be full of light but the eye is darkened how great is that darkness. Matthew 6:22-23 In the smallest light, you can be guided. When you are in the dark you can’t see anything. Spiritual darkness is often bought on by envy which is like wearing sunglasses in the dark hoping to walk a straight line on a circus tight wire called life. How can it be possible to love someone as yourself without understanding life circumstances? We work hard at this through the sweat and tears which seem to burn, sting, and become all too much to bear. Making us close our eyes to the idea of learning to love our neighbor as ourselves, let alone loving ourselves.

We see people hurting every day and if we believed they were hurting we would have a passion to do something about it. Love is like a seed that fits in your hand; when dropped to the ground it fights to take root and can grow like a tree to be 100-plus-tall and provide shelter for 100-plus things. The tree provides resources like pencils, chairs and so many things. Love produces many things we may never see with the natural eye. Jesus says if the tree does not bear fruit it’s good for nothing and should be thrown into the fire. I don’t know about you, but oftentimes I felt like I was good for nothing Throw me in the fire lest I could help with the heat in hell! Somewhere along the line, my perspective became perverse. I didn’t realize what fruit was in life. I had the thinking if I was good at sports, music, or art that I would be good for something and I would be producing a fruit that someone could appreciate. Talents are great but seeing them doesn’t mean that you will believe in them. The fruit of the spirit has nothing to do with talents but everything with your heart. You don’t have to be good at sports to have self-control. You don’t have to be a good singer to be kind and you don’t have to be a good artist, to love.

The fruits of the spirit are something we produce over time so that means it takes work for them to grow. We have to believe in the spiritual and be ready to see in the physical. Galatians Ch. 5 With this understanding, we can have the strength through this Circus of life to work through the struggles to keep hope that someday people can come to us for shelter from the fires of life that can burn anyone. It’s not about collecting talents, but how we use those talents to help others! To see talents are great but to bear fruit like love, kindness, and self-control is what we do with those talents that show what we believe!

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By Benjamin Budde

Contributing columnist

The writer is a husband, father, preacher, writer, artist, musician and songwriter. Ben and his wife, Missy, reside with their three sons in St. Marys.

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