Do You See It??

“Do you see it?”

It was a phrase he would use often as our team worked diligently to complete projects and build the foundations for dreams.  Jon, the camp manager at Campimento del Caribe in Puerto Rico, repeated it over and over again during my spring break missions trip in 2010.

We were on a building/project/service missions trip, putting in many working hours on the site of one of the only (if not the only) Christian Camps on the island.  We spent much of our time digging trenches and laying concrete for what would be the camp’s new water slide (a HUGE deal on the island).  The previous waterslide – in it’s shabby, rickety, and terrifying form was a surprisingly big draw for kids from Juana Diaz (where the camp was located) and all across Puerto Rico.  Kids who would then have the chance to hear the Gospel; to learn about and experience the Jesus who loves them.  Kids we would never meet.  Projects we would not ourselves finish.  The realization that what we were doing was still important.

Do you see it?

To grasp hold of a vision and to claim it.  To claim it in such a way that though we were but part of the beginning of what would be, we could see the end.  To be part a part of the journey and invest in the process while surrendering the outcome. 

Do you see it?

Not long ago...a few weeks at best, my trip leaders from two years ago (in preparation to lead the 2012 trip back to the island) sent the whole of the 2010 team - my teammates and I - a message with an update.  One where they thought we would like to know that the project we spent hundreds of total man (and woman!) hours on a couple years ago had finally been finished with a relatively impressive end.  Real tubing replaced the previous tarp-lined boards and a towered stair case and...it was done.  The foundation we had laid finally meant something. 

But it was more than that.  At least for me.  Because the message update came with the reminder of the words “Do you see it?”  Words said over and over during that week which now seems so long ago.  And before the message ended a final greeting was given “thanks for your hard work way back then :)  Hope you are all well with all the paths you have taken in life.  [We] hope and pray that you are still seeking after God...even in the silent and dry times.” 

It was the intensity of the final words that struck me.  Here I was trying to get a grip on the reminder of a powerful trip and the combination of the words “do you see it?” finding fruition and then individuals I both love and respect and whose opinions and insights I value signed off with something which seemed so innocent but was far from it.  With a hope and a prayer that we were still seeking God – even in the silent and dry times. 

As someone who was/is in a season of needing to be reminded to seek especially in silent and dry times (of which there have been many – especially lately), those closing words were the same challenge of the Puerto Rico trip, of the updated message.  They were words to challenge that which I couldn’t currently fathom.  A prayer to seek was a challenge to look at life as it was and to ask myself “do you see it?”

Do you see it?

Anika...Are you capable of looking at what is and staking claim on a vision of the end?  One where you embrace the journey and surrender the outcome?  To live in the hope and promise of what could be?

Silent and dry times are the hardest.  It’s easy to grasp a vision and to “see it” in the middle of a intense, rewarding missions trip.  It’s easy to see it when you can look out a blue sky with a shining sun and listen to the birds sing and subsequently feel like you are partaking in the conversation of the heavens.  It’s easy to take hold when you’re feeling nourished, refreshed, and fed into.  When the people you need to feed into you are present; when you feel a sense of direction and purpose; when you have the inclination that what you do matters and makes a difference. 

But what about when you’re not?  When you don’t?  When try as you might, you can’t?  When you are instead standing in the silent and dry...  Can one sit in sun scorched lands and lift a head to the heavens to smile screaming “do you see it!” Now there, there’s a different challenge entirely.  “Look!  See!  Can’t you see it!  Not a mirage with empty hope.  The reality! Do you see it?  Do you see what could be?  Can you take hold of a vision and live in the hope of it regardless of whether or not you can control the outcome?  Do you see it?  Do you see what God’s going to do?  Do you see that He’s up to something big?  Something bigger than you or I and certainly bigger than either of us can fathom?  Do you see it...”.

I don’t always see it and I don’t know that I see it now.  Life isn’t always that easy.  Faith isn’t always that easy.  Sometimes life is hard and sometimes it hurts and sometimes grasping hold of something bigger than the day to day (which hardly seems like laying the foundation for anything – let alone a masterpiece) seems nearly impossible.  Especially when you’d have to admit that any masterpiece that might result includes the shambles of who you know yourself to be. 

And yet... a gentle voice calls.  The same way it has been calling since God spoke to his weary and scattered Israelites... “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.  See, I am doing a new thing!  Now it springs up; do you now perceive it [do you see it?]?  I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wastelands [I’m here and speaking and providing in the silent and dry times].  The wild animals honor me, the jackals and owls, because I provide water in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland, to give drink to my people, my chosen, the people I have formed for myself that they may proclaim my praise...”  (Isaiah43:16-21)

I Am.  And I Am here.  I have formed you for myself.  And you are Mine.  You are part of what I have already begun.  

Do you see it...?