Claude Monet was one of the most important impressionist painters of the 20th century.
He once said a sentence that always caught my attention: “To see, we must forget the name of the things we are looking at”. I don’t know about you but, in addition to using it for many areas of my life, I can see this phrase in the gospel too.
Discernment and vision
“To humans belong the plans of the heart, but from the Lord comes the proper answer of the tongue’.
Proverbs 16:1-9
To these four young men God gave knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning. And Daniel could understand visions and dreams of all kinds“
Daniel 1:17
We are the only beings who receive from God rational abilities to plan, decipher codes, dream…
This characteristic leads us to always seek the path of reason. We often rationalize too much, question and wish that everything makes the most sense to us. We want to have complete knowledge of everything that happens in our lives.
However, God in different situations will use what makes no sense to us. He breaks the mold and invites us to see through faith and understand through His voice. And faith is precisely the certainty of what we do not see with our physical eyes, as it is written in Hebrews 11. I know that this is very crazy for our human and limited intellect, but God offers us day after day, in His word, a vision and a spiritual discernment about life.
Close your eyes and see
“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see“.
Hebrews 11:1
Faith exists when we need to believe in what we still don’t see. Believing what the eyes see is very easy. Faith comes through a blindfolded hope. Many times in God we will need to close our eyes so that we can see better.
“What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived” the things God has prepared for those who love him these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God“
1 Corinthians 2:9-10
Our physical ears or eyes are not able to perceive what God has prepared, but we are able to find His truths for us through our spirits. The Holy Spirit is able to reveal to us the depths of the Father’s heart.
If you are not seeing what God is doing, try to close your eyes, ask the Holy Spirit for help and really see where He is at work.
Directed by Him
But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.
We must not lean on our own understanding. For all our knowledge only serves to make our hearts see how much our bodies and souls need divine direction. We can know a lot and still know less than Him. Do you understand why you don’t need to see?
We constantly want God to show us something visible to our human eyes. We want signs as if they were traffic signs, but we need to pay attention to what He has been teaching us in our hearts, how He has touched our spirits. The strongest signals come like this.
Do not lean on your senses or your own understanding. Listen to God’s voice within you, not in your ears.
