Pay Attention

I was fortunate to visit Washington D.C. this winter when there was no snow on the ground. It was nippy, but I didn’t see any white stuff. One of the most compelling exhibitions I visited was the National Museum of the Holocaust. The museum is as haunting and moving as you might expect a Smithsonian Museum to be. It’s very well done, yet it kind of took the wind out of my sails, as places such as these do. With discomfort, I retrieved my coat from the coat check, and bundled myself up; on to the next attraction on my list. I was on my way out, on to the next sight, when I experienced a holy interruption -- god tapping me on the shoulder. I looked up -- and as plain as day, I saw it: a banner hanging way up high, well out of the normal line of sight. It read: “Think about what you saw.” I could have so easily missed it -- it was hanging up so high, the way banners do.

When I read it, I knew I was standing face to face with God. Those words spoke to me as directly as any I have ever heard. "Think about what you saw." I think these words are a rallying cry straight from God’s heart to our ears. The very essence of what we are called to be and do for Christ. We are called not to be so distractedly running through life that we miss what’s directly in front of us. We are called not to be so busily fighting for a parking place at the mall that we miss the homeless man sitting on the bench.

“Think about what you saw,” the sign said. Isn’t that where we and God meet each other? Where we all intersect? That is the Incarnation -- when humankind meets God face to face – alive in the world.

• When we think about poverty and are moved to respond, that is holy ground.
• When we think about malaria and are moved to send malaria nets, that is holy ground.
• When we think about children being deprived of an education and send uniforms, that is none other than God tapping us on the shoulder, and saying, “Think.”

There is so much we don’t see, like the words Laus Deo at the top of the Washington Monument, but they are there. But there is so much we do see... and ignore. God calls us to trust in that which we don’t see, and to think and respond to what we do see. In that way, it seems to me, we live into that to which we have been called: to be God’s hands and feet in the world.