Seeing Through God’s Eyes

by Heather Truex, Kaio Community Member

I get songs stuck in my head very easily. I almost always have a tune and lyrics running through my mind.

This night on Outreach is no different. My partner is tired and conversation has died out as we head up to the ‘L’ station, our last stop for the night. We have to walk a long stretch of Halsted before we turn onto Belmont. Praise choruses aren’t always my favorite things, but as we hike along, I really like the one thrumming around in my head.

“There is hope in the promise of the cross.
You gave everything to save the world you love.
And this hope is an anchor for my soul…”

At first, I’m just stepping in time with the beat as we walk block after block. But then we pass a bar with a group of drag queens standing out front smoking, and abruptly I realize the simple truth of the lyrics humming through my mind.

“You gave everything to save the world you love.”…Wait a second. THIS is the world that you love, God?

Farther down the street, we pass some rowdy twenty-somethings who have had too much to drink. Then there’s a group of drug dealers crowded around a doorway, and a man urinating against a brick wall. A homeless guy out panhandling—one hand outstretched, the other cradling a bottle of vodka inside the flap of his coat. More drag queens, druggies, drunk people…the usual crowd.

God, seriously? This? You gave everything for THIS?

Yes, he did. And it’s ridiculous.

A holy God, pure and without sin, steps down into our filthy world. He should be disgusted by what he sees; instead, he gazes with compassion on the beggars, swindlers, addicts…and he decides that they’re worth his own life.

“In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:10).

If the world I see in Boystown is worth everything to Christ, then it’s also a world worth seeing through God’s eyes.