Two-year-old Sadie lives for “by-YAY” (her pronunciation of ballet).
It’s the first thing Sadie does when she wakes up, and often her last waking activity. She takes her Park District ballet class quite seriously, easily agitated when others prance about rather than follow their routines.
Attending a performance of the Nutcracker, Sadie wept at intermission—fearing it was over. At a holiday basement sleep-in, her three older siblings nestled themselves into their “tent,” while Sadie performed her ballet routine—at 10:30 at night, no less!
So it should not have surprised us when, upon pirouetting across the floor of our home, Sadie spied a Christmas elf suspended from a hook which our two-year-old granddaughter immediately labeled, “by-YAY.”
In Sadie’s defense, the elf lady’s red dress sort of resembles a tutu. And her skinny black shoes might be seen as ballet slippers. But the Velcro hands clasped together pointing upward, communicated just one thing to Sadie: “by-YAY!”
She loves ballet so much, she sees it everywhere. But you and I do the same thing. What we love most, we “see” the most. Got a passion for Chevy muscle cars? You see them everywhere on the road. Wish you could afford a Burberry purse? You see them everywhere, right?
But what if we let the power of our passions work for us concerning people outside the Kingdom of God? What if we loved people so much, we started seeing them everywhere—just as Jesus sees them: eternal souls headed either to heaven or hell?
Many of us will invest considerable time and calories eating and watching the NFL playoffs. Could I challenge you—during the very next game—to set football aside for a moment? Force yourself to stare at those stadium aerial shots—likely taken from a MetLife blimp. I dare you to look at the tens of thousands of people sitting in those stands grasping hotdogs and high hopes.
Now see them as Jesus sees them: many lost souls on a slow trek toward a Christ-less eternity. Some, to be sure, are headed for heaven. But Jesus told us in Matthew 7:14 that most are not: “For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”
Shouldn’t we learn to see people this way—either lost or saved? Shouldn’t this melt our hearts and chisel our souls? Why couldn’t this be the year we learn to see people as Jesus sees them? Why shouldn’t it?