I remember seeing crowds of people standing around poster size Magic Eye images at a mall, and there was no male or female, black or white, rich or poor. Seriously, there were mixes of every race, cost and style of dress, age group, sex, and although not obvious from looks alone, most likely many different religions and spiritual beliefs as well. None of that mattered. Slowly two groups formed. One laughing and smiling and chatting with each other, people who normally wouldn't associate were discussing the wonder of what they could see. The other group looking dejected and suspicious or frustrated and angry. From time to time one of the people who could see would try to help one of us who couldn't.
Yes, I said one of us. I am one who could not see. It was about 6 years after the Magic Eye craze hit the United States that I finally saw one of the 3-D scenes for the first time. I tried for a few years whenever I came across one, but I finally gave up. I tried everything the directions said to do and all the tips I heard the people who claimed to see the images suggested. Nothing worked. I couldn't see them. I alternated between believing that something was wrong with me and that it was all a prank. I believed the latter fairly often and wondered how long it would be before the creators of the Magic Eye books and posters would announce to the world that it'd been had. There was no 3-D image in the pictures, and those who claimed to see it were either staring so long they began to see what wasn't there and deceived themselves or were lying to fit into the special group, the ones who all claimed to see.
The night it finally happened to me, I was drunk and getting a tattoo. I took a bathroom break between the outline and coloring of the piece, and the tattoo shop had one of the posters on the wall at what would be eye level for folks sitting on the toilet. I stared at it, but I wasn't trying to see anything in it. It was just there. I had long ago given up on the possibility of seeing it. But as I stared through the image, not really seeing the surface pattern of images I suddenly realized I was staring at a sea turtle. That grabbed my attention, and I saw an entire underwater sea scene, hammerhead shark included. It was awesome. I just accidentally saw it. I learned that night not to ficus on the 2-D images on the surface, but to look through them, beyond them. If I didn't get distracted by the repeating patterns of colors and shapes that were obvious, something came to life.
It wasn't a hoax. It wasn't a bunch of people lying about what they experienced to fit in. It wasn't self deception. And I wasn't excluded anymore. And when I think of that night and how I have always been able to see the images since then, I realize that it not being a hoax, liars, self-deception or me not being able to be a part was as much true with God and His love as it was for some computer generated 3-D images.
I was raised in the church. My father is a pastor, making me one of the infamous preacher's kids your mother warned you about. And I believed in God and that He loved everyone. I believed John 3:16, until I could no longer see past the surface of my life with all of its hurts and fears and emptiness and confusion and rejection. Then I found it all too easy to believe that the God I still believed in hated me, or at least was apathetic when it came to me. He didn't care about me at best, and at worst, He hated me and wanted me to suffer. I began to wonder about and question everything I had been told.
Was the idea of a real and personal relationship with our Creator true or a cruel hoax? Did people really experience spiritual transformation, life and relationship or were they either delusional and self-deceived or faking it in hopes of making it or fitting in to the good people club? And if it wasn't bogus, why couldn't I see and experience the love of God for me? Was I somehow excluded and rejected?
Then, after years of searching and studying and trying this spiritual path, practice, philosophy and that one, I gave up. I quit trying. I let the fires of anger harden my heart and just tried to keep from being too miserable for whatever time was left of my life. Then I came to the point where I knew I had to get clean and sober or just go ahead and try to kill myself once more. I set off on a spiritual journey of recovery, full of doubt at first, because what no one trying to help me could quite seem to understand was that God hated me. He wasn't going to help me. Except He did.
They told me over and over that God could and would help me, free me and restore me, if He were sought. They told me that I would one day wake spiritually if I got out of my own way, stopped being selfish and self-centered and finally, really, surrender my life and will to the care of God. I doubted, but I tried it. I sat and looked at life without trying to figure it out or make anything from the patterns of pain and fear. And one day my unfocused gaze saw through the mess on the surface, and I saw God. No, I didn't see a burning bush or an old man with a beard or anything like that. I just saw that there was really something there, below what I could perceive, that had always been there and always would be. What I saw was life and evidence of God's love for me.
Things didn't suddenly become wonderful. Everything didn't come up roses. Life still sucked in some ways. But God did things in my life, not the least of which included freeing me of the obsession to drink and drug, that I had never been able to do for myself. I found a life worth living. It wasn't imagined. It was right there all along, and no matter where I looked from that point on, in each corner and in the middle, the image that had always been there, even when I couldn't see it, remained. Below the surface, through the mess, changing everything, was and is the very real heart and love of God.
It is real. It isn't a hoax, and you are not excluded any more than I was. No matter what you've done or has been done to you, no matter what you have or haven't thought, believed or tried. Regardless of anything and everything, the heart of God beats with love for you. He desires for you to see through the surface images and patterns and see Him and His love as much as you do, more. He wants that so much that He came to make it possible and to set in motion everything needed to set you free long before you even suspected you were captive. Don't focus on the things on the surface, don't try to make the patterns come together and make sense. The life is beyond that. The life is in seeking and seeing Him in every dot that makes up the mess of our lives and beyond the surface of our perception. He is real. He is there. His heart beats with love for me and for you.
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