Seeing
Psalms 11:7 ASV For Jehovah is righteous; He loveth righteousness: The upright shall behold his face.
Luke 10:21 ASV In that same hour he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit, and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes: yea, Father; for so it was well-pleasing in thy sight.
If only you could control everyone with whom your child comes in contact. As soon as there is any interaction with others at school, on the playground, or at friends’ houses, there is an opportunity for them to begin seeing things from a different point of view. They may seem to be wonderful little creatures with happy faces and pure motives and actions until, magically, there is some objectionable word used or some errant behavior displayed that was never there until they were around ‘Judy’ or ‘Johnny’. Their perceptions, how they see life, and their ability to do right have everything to do with who they’re seeing. The choice of friends will have everything to do with the choice of right and wrong.
I had this friend who lived in the house right across the alley from us in Castle Rock. He was a charming young man whom I looked up to and from whom I was a given a perspective that was quite different from that which I’d been given in our home. He showed me how to emulate smoking with the smoke from matches. I went with his family to the pool hall on Main Street. (just wasn’t the type of place we would normally frequent) From him I also learned how to fail at putting out a fire in the vacant lot next to the church and how to hide while the Fire Department put the fire out. I’m sure there were additional words, attitudes, and behaviors that were shown to me as a result of the moments spent with the neighbor boy, and I’m sure there were a great many of them that would never have been learned if my Dad had been there with us. Somehow his presence always seemed to make things look much different. It still does.
So what is it about babes that qualifies them to see certain things that cannot be seen by the ‘wise and understanding’, and how is it that Jesus directed in Matthew 18:3 for us to become as little children? It would seem that acquiring wisdom and understanding were the reasons for partaking of the fruit in the garden and the only way Adam and Eve could have come up with this notion was by hanging out with the neighborhood snake. What took them from their childlike innocence and stripped them of their ability to behold God in His glory had everything to do with who they were beholding. Even though God knew what they were up to and could see their actions and the motives of their hearts, somehow their focus on the serpent and his enticing words caused them to lose sight of their Father’s face. Their ability to choose correctly was greatly altered by their newfound maturity and they completely lost sight of the higher ways of God’s heart. If somehow they could have kept His image before them their encounter with temptation would have left them no less innocent and still completely childlike.
I’m so grateful that there is a way back to the innocence, that there is a rebirth that makes the Father’s face and His presence and His ways visible to even those of us who have left physical childhood long ago. In seeking His face early, in keeping it continually before the eyes, there is an awakening of those eyes to those things that will only be seen by those who are His babes, His children. When the neighborhood faces rise with propositions of various considerations, the pure fixation on the face of the Father will preserve the purity and innocence provided in redemption and keep the eyes clear to what He desires to reveal to His children.