31 Days of Celebrating Middle Age {What Do You See?}

So here we are, throwing a word-party for The Middle.  I can't tell you how much it means to me that you'd even come.

No, really.  I mean it.  Who does that?  Only us...only you and me. 

"The Middle".  We stereotype it, we attempt to prepare for it, we compensate for it.  And we instinctively, I think, fear it. 

You have your "middle children".  Don't listen to what the psychologists say about them, whatever you do!  You have "the middle school years" - the most difficult of all of childhood, research has proven.  And you have your mid-life crisis.  Why are middling things so hard?  It seems that the middle of anything is guaranteed to have its hopeless moments.

God has made dear and precious and very personal promises to each one of us.  But in the middle, we often don't yet see the full manifestation of them.  We have experienced the healing touch of Christ in our lives, but only in measure.  Those promises are closer to fulfillment now than ever before, but we still only see them "as trees walking".

Taking the blind man by the hand, He brought him out of the village; and after spitting on his eyes and laying His hands on him, He asked him, "Do you see anything?"And he looked up and said, "I see men, for I see them like trees, walking around." (Mark 8:23, 24)

Very God asks you and I today, "Do you see anything?"

He asks us, not because He doesn't already know the answer, and not because He doesn't intend to fully restore us.

He asks us, because we need to acknowledge that we don't yet see as we ought.

Particularly if you are still under the law, if there is any link between your performance and God's acceptance and therefore His favor,  you still see "men as trees walking". You've experienced the touch of Jesus, maybe even come to a saving knowledge, but you are not seeing clearly. Yet you might go years - alas, decades - insisting that you see just fine.

Then, one day, you hear the gospel preached by a pastor-teacher who is walking in a New Covenant understanding, and you realize that "seeing men as trees walking" isn't the same as seeing Jesus clearly and centrally. You have not been seeing the world as you could and should.

Does this offend you?

Let Jesus put His hands on you again, afresh. The moment you see the God of all grace, the moment your focus is on the finished work of Christ and not on your performance, you finally see everyone else clearly, and through the eyes of love. In fact, through the lens of the gospel of grace, as taught in all the New Testament, everything in all of Scripture becomes clear.

Once you clearly see the difference between an Old Covenant understanding of God, and a New Covenant reality...once you see that all of Scripture, Genesis to Revelation, is really about Jesus...once you see that God thought it wisdom to reconcile us through Him, and impute to us His obedience...

...well, when you suddenly see all that, you will see exactly "why the (heck) it means so much to me" to tell the world.

The power to be
The power to give
The power to see, yeah, yeah (suddenly I see)
She got the power to be
The power to give
The power to see, yeah, yeah (suddenly I see)
She got the power to be
The power to give
The power to see, yeah, yeah, yeah (suddenly I see)
She got the power to be
The power to give
The power to see, yeah, yeah (suddenly I see)
She got the power to be
The power to give
The power to see, yeah, yeah