02/22/2021
By Pastor Vinnie Cappetta
Scripture and the Eye of God
I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you. Psalm 32:8
As a counselor, you can imagine that I appreciate that verse a great deal.
That verse and this devotional both caught my attention this week. I hope you enjoy the words of from A Tree Full of Angels by Marina Wiederkehr as much as I did…
We do not always realize what a radical suggestion it is for us to read to be formed and transformed rather than to gather information. We are information seekers. We love to cover territory. It is not easy for us to stop reading when the heart is touched; we are a people who like to get finished. Let me offer you a new way to read. Read with a vulnerable heart. Expect to be blessed in the reading. Read as one awake, one waiting for the beloved. Read with reverence.
We are naturally reverent beings, but much of our natural reverence has been torn away from us because we have been born into a world that hurries. There is no time to be reverent with the earth or with each other. We are all hurrying into progress. And for all our hurrying we lose sight of our true nature a little more each day. This is precisely why we need to believe in the eye of God hovering over us. We are not alone. There is One with us who wants to give us back our reverence. There is One with us who wants to give us back the gift of time.
Read the Scriptures, then, with reverence, giving up the lie that you don't have time. Read under the eye of God. Read as one who has nothing but time.
Before you read, you may wish to pray:
All-seeing One,
above me, around me, within me.
Be my seeing as I read these sacred words.
Look down upon me
Look out from within me
Look all around me
See through my eyes
Hear through my ears
Feel through my heart
Touch me where I need to be touched;
and when my heart is touched,
give me the grace to lay down this Holy book
and ask significant questions:
Why has my heart been touched?
How am I to be changed through this touch?
All seeing One,
I need to change
I need to look a little more like You
May these sacred words change and transform me.
Then I can meet You face to face
without dying
because I've finally died enough.
To die is to be healed a little more each death,
until that final death
when I'll be healed forever.
It will be a healing that will last.
Your Words are healing
although they bring about my death.
O Eye of God, look not away.
