Seeing Like Jesus Sees

And He was moved with compassion for them, and healed their sick.

Matthew 14:14

Are you old enough to remember the 3-D craze of several decades ago? Using cardboard glasses with red and blue lenses, you could read comic books drawn and printed in a certain way and—voilà!—the flat, lifeless pages sprang to life in three dimensions. The 3-D glasses were even available for certain movies.

Wouldn’t it be interesting to suddenly be able to look at the world through “Jesus-colored lenses”—that is, to be able to see the world as Jesus sees it? There must be a radical difference between what He sees and what we see simply because we don’t always act like He did. For instance, what He saw evoked compassion on numerous occasions. Sick people, demonized people, lost people, hungry and homeless people . . . these were not just the froth on the wake of a fast-moving society. These were real people with real needs.

When Jesus looked at life, He always did the same thing—He gave. He gave of His time, His power, His wisdom . . . and ultimately, He gave His life. What do you see when you look at the world—and what do you do in response? The closer we get to Jesus, the more we’ll see what He saw.

Seeing the world like Jesus means giving to the world like Jesus.