Open my eyes, Lord!

Morning Meditation for Friday: Prone to Wander

September 4, 2020

Isaiah 53:6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,

each of us has turned to his own way;

and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (NIV 1984).

       It began innocently enough. My parents would go out once a week to a nearby cafeteria to eat in the afternoon. At that time the portions they gave were very large. Mom and dad began to bring home what they were unable to eat and, by bedtime, those leftovers were consumed. Then I noticed that they went over to the cafeteria twice a week, bringing home any leftovers for supper. About the same time, mom began buying a tub of prepared chicken salad from Sam’s. She would make chicken salad sandwiches on small croissant rolls, also bought from Sam’s. Then came the day when mom had made black-eyed peas for a family meal. On my first spoonful of those peas, I realized that the salt-pork she used was rancid. And for the first time, I realized my mother had lost her ability to cook several years back.

     I had always held a picture of my mother in my head. This is what mom looked like to me. It was the same with my grandmother. I saw her as a beautiful lady, warm and caring. Several months after my grandmother died, I was handed a picture of an old and heavy-set woman. This is what my grandmother really looked like. I had spent a large part of my life around both my mother and grandmother, becoming blind to the changes they both went through. The house I grew up in now seems a far different and small house than my memories of it. Even the church I grew up in seems a much smaller and different building altogether. Time had moved on, year after year, and I became stuck in the past with memories. Sometimes we become blind to reality, even when it is someone we love.

     Perhaps that is why change is so hard. Each day becomes a series of days that blur into a picture where change goes by, unnoticed until it hits us in the face that something has changed. Since I began spiritual journaling, I began to notice that I could find changes occurring in me on a regular basis. If I had not taken time to reflect back, I would not have found the patterns of change. They come silently, as we become blind.

     Why is it easy to move away from God? Perhaps we notice the first or second time we are too busy to pray. Yet days grow into weeks and weeks grow into months. The same happens with worship, missing one Sunday, then another, until the succession becomes a blur as the perception of time stops. Then one day, when the world is falling apart, we can see and wonder, “What happened to God?” It did not happen to God. God did not abandon us. In blindness, we did not notice that we had walked away.

     There is Good News to all of this. God has not walked away from us. God wants us to return, to repent of our wandering, and to be restored.

     Pastor Jim Jackson