Connecting the Right Dots

What do you see when you look around? It’s a great question, a very revealing question. It can tell us an awful lot about ourselves.

When you look at a forest of trees, what do you see? A business opportunity? Sacred ground?

When you look at others, what do you see? Sex objects? Children of God?

Maybe we see nothing at all. Our senses have been dulled, and we take everything for granted.

In our text (Luke 17.11-19) there are nine lepers who don’t see anything all. They don’t connect the right dots. They’re healed of this dreaded disease, and they did not see what needed to be seen. For notice, they’re criticized by Jesus. I’m sure they were grateful. You have to be a complete dunce not to be grateful. But there’s still something lacking. They took it for granted perhaps; they did not see God’s glory or his goodness or the in-breaking Kingdom of God. Maybe they did not see anything at all other than a healing—a powerful reminder to us that healings don’t necessarily change hearts.

But there’s one who did make the right connections. One leper sees that he’s been healed, and he returns to Jesus, praising God with a loud voice. I believe what’s happening here is very profound. This man gets it. His faith has made him whole. His faith in God has enabled him to see what needs to be seen--the goodness of God, the in-breaking of God’s kingdom through Jesus. I get the sense that this one leper is ready and willing to live his entire life in gratitude for what God has done.

The same might be said of us. Faith in response to what God has done gives us the right vision of the world. Faith teaches us that life is a gift not a right. (The doctrine of the Trinity reminds that God doesn’t need anyone for he is a communion of love, but he creates out of the abundance of his love.) Faith also teaches us that without God’s mercy, we could not know the source of love from which we came. Faith gives us the right vision so that we can live rightly. And the only way to live rightly is to live with gratitude and reverence toward God and his creation. What other response can there be to a God who gives us life out of love and redeems that life in love so that we might live in and out of his love? I can’t think of any other response but to live for the glory of God. Our faith—if it’s an active faith!—should enable us to see rightly so that we can live righteously. It will make us whole. Peace.