Seek the Good

“For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you prepared in the sight of all the peoples.” (Luke 2.30-31)

Somewhere there is a story about a young boy who went on a camping trip with his dad to the Adirondacks Mountains in New York. For a good part of the excursion, they decided to hire a guide, a good decision because the guide didn’t take them down familiar paths, but instead showed them places nobody else got to see, leading them into the heart of the woods. 

Along the way, the guide took time to point out to the boy many of the beauties of nature, things that the ordinary person might pass by without seeing. One day, after the skillful guide had pointed out a few more of the hidden secrets of nature, the young boy, with fascination in his voice, asked the guide, “Sir, can you see God?” The old guide answered, “You know, it’s getting so I can hardly see anything else.”

Listening to that story, we find an incredible truth in it, the belief that mere mortals can see God, so long as we have our eyes opened to the many ways in which the Creator of the world reveals himself to the creatures of the world. Within that belief is the central teaching of the Incarnation, that in a certain place at a certain time God walked among us. Some looked and saw, while others looked and saw nothing.

The sacred texts selected for this Sunday speak to us of two aged people who–like the guide in the story–were able to see God revealed before their very eyes. The evangelist Luke introduces us to these two people who encounter the living God, not so much in the skies above, but in a small child resting in his mother’s arms.

These two people, named Simeon and Anna, were familiar figures in the Temple in Jerusalem, their faces wrinkled and their bodies bent over, both of them spending most of their lives in and around this sacred spot, hopeful that one day they might catch a glimpse of the divine presence, aged eyes always opened and ready for that revelation when it should move fleetingly before them. And then the day came.

Simeon is described as a man who was righteous and devout and “the Holy Spirit was upon him.” As he entered the temple on a day like all the other days that he had made the same walk, he saw a young mother with her husband entering the Temple at the same time. With one look, Simeon saw something in the child that many others did not and could not see–God among us.

With that revelation, the old man broke into song, maybe even a dance on his ancient ankles, as he exclaimed, “Now, Master, you may let your servant go in peace, according to your word, for my eyes have seen our salvation, which you prepared in the sight of all the people, a light for revelation to the gentiles, and glory for your people Israel.”

No sooner had he completed his song of praise than another aged soul, this one named Anna, shuffled across the cobblestones of the temple floor, lifting her head to see the same sight–a newborn child held closely in the arms of his mother, with his father’s hand gently touching the arm of his wife as they walked through the entryway of the Temple courtyard. 

This woman, described to us by the evangelist as a prophetess, as well as a person “advanced in years”–eighty-four to be exact–never left the Temple day or night, but fasted and prayed there. When she saw the child, “She gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem.”

The point of these encounters, it would seem, is that both Simeon and Anna saw something in the child that others did not see. Steeped in the spiritual like a tea bag steeped in a cup of hot water, they saw beyond the visible to the invisible, beyond the obvious to the not-so-obvious, beyond the plain to the precious. With spiritual eyes more so than their dimming eyesight, they stared upon the face of God.

The French writer, Antoine Saint-Exupery, made famous many years ago these words spoken by a fox to a little prince marooned in a desert, “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.” That so called “simple secret” made by the fox is as true now as it was when first spoken. Simeon and Anna, both advanced in years, both more spiritually alive than physically alive at this point, knew that same simple secret–only the heart sees rightly.

For us, these many years since that holy encounter in the Temple, it becomes our hope and our prayer that we also can see rightly, that we eventually will see with our eyes those essential things in life, things invisible to the naked eye, but visible to the heart. While there are many of these essential things, chief among them is the beauty to be found in each human life, the wonder of the world at large, and the recognition that all is gift.

Opening our eyes to such essentials, we better the chances of our seeing God among us, just as that clear-sighted couple in the Temple did. When we are focused on the essentials, we find ourselves on the lookout for the good in this world. “What if,” a contemporary spiritual writer once asked, “What if we put ourselves on the look-out for something good each day?” He suggested that we train ourselves to open our eyes to “the new, the next, and the good.”

This type of vision requires an active seeing, an intention to find the holy hidden in the unholy, to watch with the expectation that God wants us to find him. The Galilean Rabbi, praised as a child by Simeon and Anna, had such eyes that saw what is essential, seeing a beautiful brother where others saw a blind beggar, seeing a good heart where others saw a gutsy harlot, seeing the possibility of light where others saw the probability of darkness. He was on the lookout for something good each day, while his critics were dead set on finding something bad each day.

Today, the question before us is a simple one. What are we looking for? The truth is we will see what we seek. If we seek the good, we will see it, and if we seek the bad, we will see it. Our eyes, like our minds, are trained. And if we want them to see a world with the God of goodness in it, then we must train ourselves to actively seek his presence all around us. Simeon and Anna had trained their eyes, through countless years of prayer and fasting, to find God, even in the new face of a fresh baby. 

There is an ancient Native American legend that tells of a chief of a tribe who lay dying. He called his three sons before him. “My sons,” he said, I am dying. Soon one of you will succeed me as chief. I want each of you to climb the holy mountain and bring back to me something beautiful. The one whose gift is the most precious will become the chief.

Several days passed and the three sons returned from their search. The first son brought back a beautiful flower. The second son brought back a shiny stone. Then, when it came the turn of the third son, he said to his father, “Father, I have brought back nothing.” He explained, “As I stood at the top of the holy mountain, I saw on the other side a land of fertile green pastures and crystal waters.”

“I could imagine our people settling there and finding for themselves a better life. I was so taken by what I saw and what I was thinking that I had to return here before I could find something to bring back to you.” The old chief smiled and said to his third son, “You will become the chief, for you have brought us the gift of vision for the good.”

That same quest is now ours to make–to find something good in a world where most people are geared towards finding everything that is wrong. When we are able to open our eyes to see the good around us, we are within reach of God, right before us, the same One who desired to show himself to two people on the holy mount, revealing himself to them in a newborn child whose face was nestled near the breast of his mother. 

While everybody else in the Temple on that day walked past the mother and child without a second glance, Simeon, stooped and frail, stopped and saw the divine face, and, at the same time, Anna, skin and bones, approached and announced that God had arrived in Jerusalem. With them as our guides, we also search for that same divine presence, confident and certain that God still walks among his people.

–Jeremy Myers