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RESET: Reality Check. Perceiving the Unseen.

daily text logoDecember 23, 2014

Luke 2:8-9

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.

RESET

sensitivityWhat do you think happened that night on the outskirts of Bethlehem? Did those angels fly in for the occasion? And if so, where did they come from? Heaven? Where is that?

Or did God pull back the veil of the cosmos, giving us a glimpse of what ultimate reality looks like? What if Heaven isn’t some ethereal far off place somewhere “up there.” What if Heaven is pressing in on the walls of the universe, hovering all about us?

What if that’s what it means when Jesus says, the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand? It’s right here, right now, ready to break in.

What if that night, when the Son of God was born in Bethlehem, the Holy Spirit blew a hole in the side of the universe and the Kingdom of Heaven came flooding in. Wouldn’t that explain the phenomenon of the glory of the Lord shining all  around them?

What if those angels had been there all along? That’s what John seems to have seen in his vision we know as Revelation; a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and singing. . . . ”

That’s what Isaiah said he saw in his celebrated vision. And just like those shepherds, it terrified him.

What if those angels are still there. . . . . right now. . . . . hovering just on the other side of the veil.

What if the issue is not their invisibility but our blindness? What if the problem is we don’t have eyes to see?

What if we could live out our every day ordinary lives with that kind of extraordinary sensitivity; the capacity to sense the unseen?

I think this is one of the more subtle yet no less spectacular lessons of that first Christmas; the utterly astonishing nearness of Heaven to Earth.

Those Angels are still right there– as sure as the Sun.

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 2 Corinthians 4:18.

PEOPLE GET READY! JESUS IS COMING.

J.D. Walt writes daily for Seedbed’s Daily Text. He serves as Seedbed’s Sower in Chief. Follow him @jdwalt on Twitter or email him at jd.walt@seedbed.com.

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WHAT IS THIS? Wake-Up Call is a daily encouragement to shake off the slumber of our busy lives and turn our eyes toward Jesus. Each morning our community gathers around a Scripture, a reflection, a prayer, and a few short questions, inviting us to reorient our lives around the love of Jesus that transforms our hearts, homes, churches, and cities.

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