The Power of Seeing

Have you experienced looking for something and not finding it, only to realize later that you have been staring at it? Or have you experienced finding something you thought you will never find? Let me tell you a story.

I was half asleep one late evening when I heard my friend uttered a word of dismay. Awakened, I asked her what happened. A piece of her new sunglasses was lost she said. I saw her turned her bag inside out where she kept her sunglasses but found nothing. She looked on the table, then on the floor, but still did not find anything. I, wanting to help her, got out of bed, checked her sunglasses and found out that it was the screw she lost. With a flashlight in my hand, I started the search.

I rechecked my friend’s bag. I rechecked table. I looked diligently through every corner of the room. Yet there was nothing. My friend began to feel hopeless and told me that it is over. She wanted to terminate the search. But the desire to find the screw grew inside me. I became more eager. So I kept looking until suddenly, I heard a very light click on the floor. I knew it was the screw! I must have kicked it when I moved to the door. Slowly, I sat down to scan the floor. And behold! There was the screw lying on our doorstep – the tiny 4mm screw! Like a precious gem, I carefully picked up the screw and held it before my eyes. I was jubilant!

From the start, I had this strong feeling that I will find that screw as much as I believe that innate to every one of us is the determination and will to find what we have been searching for. I believe that if we want to find and if we believe we can find whatever it is we wanted to get, we will find it. It is the wanting, the desire, the drive, the perseverance that count, not the looking. There are no lazy eyes, only lazy minds.

God gave us two extraordinary gifts: the eyes and the power to see. What we are looking for, more often than not, is right in front of us, waiting to be found. Waiting for our attention. But the question is, “Do you want to see?” “Do you wish to find what you are looking for?” “Are the things you are looking for the things you really, truly want?” “Are you seeing what you are called to see or only the things you wanted to see?” “Do your eyes see beyond what you see?”

Like the two blind men who saw the light of Jesus in the dark (Matthew 9:27-31) and the man born blind who sees (John 9:1-40), we are able to see even the tiniest. This is a free gift, a unique power. Not [to want] to use this gift could be amountable to self-blasphemy.