Look at Him

I have a box of “treasures” that lives wherever I do. It’s full of photos of important memories and people, letters written by friends, random little trinkets that mean something to me, and various sketches that I’ve held onto. One of my favorite artifacts in this tossed-about shoebox is a church bulletin from one of my pastors’ last sermon at our church in Kansas City. He preached on Revelation 22:12-17:

“Behold, I am coming soon…I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”…
“The Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.”

My family went to the first service as usual that day, but being nearly in tears by the end, I stayed for the second service and listened to it again. The second time, I scribbled down important quotes as they came in an effort to preserve them in spite of my terrible memory. That box is locked away in my dorm building right now, and I won’t get to it until at least May, but one quote written on the bulletin that I haven’t been able to forget says, “He commands: ‘Look.’ Don’t look at the dying sun. Don’t look at the collapse of your political institutions. Don’t look at the burning planets. Don’t look at the laws of physics unraveling. Look at him.”

This quote comes in and out of my mind through every disaster and crisis: each time a natural disaster rips apart a town (or nearly a continent), when politics become louder than much else around me, and through the entirety of the world being shut into their homes. 

“Look at him.”

Naturally what we focus our gaze on and meditate on day after day, hour after slowly passing hour, will become our all. It will consume us and turn us into products of itself.
Friends, we are not children of the news, obsessively refreshing pages, listening to the same reports over and over, putting worry and anxiety in and holding it there. It is natural to be worried, and I am no stranger to true unrelenting anxiety, but I admit that I too often feed it and fill myself with more fear-provoking videos and articles than are beneficial for anyone.
We are not children of politics, embracing divisions as our primary identification when, in the grand scheme of eternity (and even right now), it’s not all that important. At least not as important as some make it out to be.
We are children of the King, saved and being sanctified, given new identities, new hopes, a new heart, and a new Person on the receiving end of our worship, meditation, and fixation. He is far more worthy than news reports and Twitter debates to have the majority of our daily quarantine downtime.

So “Look at him.”

He is acquainted with suffering and sorrow. He endured the cross and persecution far worse than many of us will ever know.
But, believer, he is seated at the right hand of God.

Let us set aside our worries, doubts, fears, and sins, and run with all endurance, full-speed ahead toward the finish of the race we’ve been set to run, all the while with our eyes fixed on Jesus Christ, the author and finisher of our faith, seated on that glorious throne (Heb. 12:1-3).

Don’t only look--Behold!

We can behold the blinking red alerts that say “EMERGENCY” and let it deeply terrorize and haunt us. We can fix our eyes on that and live in panic. But what peace comes in beholding our Lord and Savior, lifting our gaze to him now and every day until we see him face to face. What joy will there be, not only to finally close the distance and hug our brothers and sisters, but to end all distance in eternity and bow at the feet of Jesus with our attention undivided, all worries gone forever, and nothing to distract us from beholding his glory. 

What peace is there in meditating on good and beautiful things, and remembering that no disaster or terrible event, not even our response to it, can separate us from his love now or ever (Rom. 8:38-39).
What a worthy and powerful God we love and serve who reigns supreme over all that is in heaven and on earth and still cares about the worries in our hearts.

He is “the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”
Behold him.