Doyle wrote this on the plane as we were flying to Swaziland. It was amazing to read it after the team shared their final debrief. God spoke this from the beginning, and He spoke it through the team during the entire trip.
Between the unsteady rocking of my seat and the whir of the jet engine it’s hard to relax. My family and I are somewhere over South Carolina, traveling at nearly 650 miles per hour. We’re flying into our destiny. Sometime ago God began to adjust my perspective, maybe rearrange my idea of who He is and who I was meant to be. So now, here we are on our way to Swaziland, Africa.
What is it about Swaziland that God wants to show us? Probably, not much about the country itself other than the beauty of His creation. No, most likely, God wants me to look into the eyes of Swazi people. Children, women, men — all who are created in the image of the Creator. God likes to do that. He likes to bring us face to face with the deity in flesh. Every person carries the imprint to God upon them, but too many times we’re blind to both Him and them.
You see, God is up to something. He is always up to something. From the Garden of Eden to Moses and the Burning Bush, David and Goliath, the prophet Elijah and Jesus. Yes, Jesus. What was He up to with Jesus? Jesus stands as the culmination of deity in flesh. The gospel of John says that Jesus is “the Word made flesh”. To look into the eyes of Jesus was to look into the eyes of God and man simultaneously. Jesus is fully man and fully God.
Sometimes I wonder what it was like to look into Jesus’ eyes. What kind of emotion would those eyes evoke? Would I be overwhelmed by guilt and shame because of what I don’t see of myself or would I be consumed by a passion that causes me to completely forget myself? Would those eyes crush me or comfort me? Perhaps I would find myself both overwhelmed and consumed by the intense gaze of Jesus. To have my soul stripped bare and then wrapped in the warmth of His loving compassion; surely this is what it is to be held in the gaze of the living Christ.
I have a friend whose eyes are the most beautiful blue that one might imagine. Many times I have looked into his eyes and wondered what Jesus eyes will look like. I know that, according to good old common sense, Jesus eyes most likely are deep, dark brown. He was born Jewish so of course He would have dark eyes. The Bible never describes Jesus’ eyes. What we do know about Jesus’ eyes is that they cried, they looked to heaven, they looked with compassion, they looked with sorrow. What matters is not the color or size of Jesus’ eyes. What mattered to the Father was the message held within those mysteriously beautiful eyes. These were the eyes that witnessed the glory of God before creation. These were the eyes that witnessed creation itself. These were the eyes of God.
My friend with the beautiful blue eyes makes me think of Jesus’ eyes. Actually, my friend’s eyes make me think of Jesus. I’ve seen joy, sorrow, mischief and even confusion in my friend’s eyes. Those eyes have been both an indicator and a mirror. They indicate the state of my friend’s heart and mirror the condition of my own. Jesus said that the eyes are the window of the soul. And Jesus wasn’t afraid to look deeply into those windows and straight into the soul of a person, a soul as big as the sky.
