Seeing Is Believing

Or Is It?

You're may not believe it, but it seems that most people don’t like their jobs. What a shocker, right? According to Google, something like 85% of people hate their jobs. I guess since it’s just so conducive to eating, we all do it anyway. But FYI, if your one of those people who doesn’t mind going the extra mile to get out of work, I know just the place for you. If you can get yourself sent to federal prison you can lay around on your bunk all day, get three squares, and contemplate the nature of your existence. Of course, the bunks are hard as nails, the food will make a Billy goat puke, and sitting around will make the time between the ticks of the clock seem like an eternity. 

I couldn’t do it! I had to get a job for my own sanity. And true to the nature of my twilight zone life in prison, the weird kept coming and I ended up with a job as a sewing machine mechanic. Absolutely, never in a million years saw that one coming. In fact, didn’t know that there was such a job in the world. That’s one you don’t hear every day, right? I’d just assumed in this tech savvy world we’d gotten past making clothes with needle and thread. Turns out………not so much!

Clothing textile factories make clothes in primarily the same way they made them a hundred years ago. The machines are faster and more precise, but they still stitch clothing together the same way as when they did it by hand. I worked in a UNICOR factory that made inmate clothing for the BOP and state prisons. There were a few normal looking sewing machines like Singer used to sell in Walmart but most were industrial machines that did only one operation all day long. And talk about complicated…….those things had anywhere from two to fifteen spools of thread attached to them. It was crazy because all of the action went on under the hood. What I mean is that the knots that held the stitches together were all made under the fabric that was running through the machine. The needle goes down through the fabric and depending on the type of machines, lots of moving parts work around the needle to form a stitch. These movements under the hood are so fast and so complicated that you can’t watch it in real time. And since you couldn’t see any of the actual process, the only way you could diagnose one was to look at the results. We had to look at what kind of stitch the machine made and if it was correct. You had to imagine that you could see the machine working and what was going on if the stitch was wrong. Skipped stitches meant some of the parts under the hood were worn and broken needles meant something was really off. But you could never see any of it until you looked at the results.

It reminds me of following Jesus. You can’t see Him and most of the time you have no idea what He’s doing. All you can do is look at His stitches……At His results.

Hebrews eleven, the faith chapter, tells us that the heroes of the Bible persevered, as though they saw the one who is invisible. They lived their life as if they could see Jesus! Would that make a difference to you? If Jesus came down and gave you a personal visit, would it change the way you live your life?

Of course, it would!

I wish I could say it would change nothing about the way I live my life, but that wouldn’t be true. But give me a little slack, I’ve spent most of my life listening to the world tell me that I’ve got to see it to believe it and that only what I see with my own eyes is real. It’s one of the most counterintuitive things the Bible ever asks you to do, believe in something you can’t see. But if we aspire to be stars on God’s team like the heroes of Hebrew’s eleven, we’ve got to live as though we see it.

Honestly, I bet we would be shocked if God granted us a day of seeing the world as it really is.

Imagine if the unseen realm were visible and we could see angels and other celestial beings around us and amongst us. In second Kings Elisha and his servant were surrounded by a large force of Aramean soldiers. To reassure his terrified servant, Elisha prayed that God would open his servant’s eyes so he could see the other realm. The Lord opened his eyes so he could see the mountains behind the soldiers were full of chariots and horses made of fire. 

I knew a guy in prison who was extremely devout. Held Bible studies, freely gave of what he had, and helped wherever he could. He had been in prison a very long time and he told me that years ago he felt called to go on a long food fast. Like several weeks long, drinking only one cup of apple juice every day. 

After a couple weeks he said he began to see things around the compound that other people didn’t see. Like demons shuffling along beside inmates. He saw one particularly imposing demon that the Lord told him to stay away from because he was too powerful. He saw little small demons floating in front of him that were amazed that he could see them. He said after the fast ended the visions abated. Now I don’t know if any of that was real or if my friend was just delirious with hunger. But it makes you wonder!

Most of us say we’d love to just once get a glimpse of this other place, to reassure us that it’s all real. But Jesus said that those who don’t see, but believe anyway, are the blessed ones! A strange thing happens when you believe without seeing and it’s directly opposite of the way this world works, this world says you’ve got to see it to believe it…..God says you’ve got to believe it to see it!

Keep following!