Look!

How many of us look at the world through stale eyes and jaded souls? We are subject to the same routines, the same faces and the same disappointments. Sometimes it is difficult to face a day with fresh enthusiasm. Three thousand years ago, Solomon, the teacher, faced a similar dilemma. For him, like us, the world was repetitive. He observed the “there is nothing new under the sun” (Eccl 1:9 NIV); all water is re-cycled; every dusk sees the same sun set; every generation is passed over for another. He concluded that life was meaningless! “Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? (Eccl 1:10 NIV).

Yet, in his declaration of futility, he gives a solution to his and our dilemma. It is encapsulated in the word, ‘Look’. If we could simply see with new eyes, observe with a fresh perspective, gaze with renewed wonder, we would discover that God’s compassions are not second-hand but are “new every morning” (Lam 3:23 NIV). It is all a question of perception. As the French author, Marcel Proust says, “The real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands but in seeing with new eyes”. I was always challenged by my children, and now my grandchildren, to look at everything with innocent wonder. It is a skill we need to foster. Picasso said that he could paint like Velasquez at fifteen but it took him “eighty years to paint like a child”.

How much of our world-weariness could be resolved by the one word, ‘look’!

Robert

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