Look Up

The pavement stretches, dappled in shadow. I walk, looking down, weighted by a thousand things, watching my feet. Those feet, they pound tired, thunking against the road. I move past a puddle, a murky earth-carved divot full of leftovers from yesterday’s rain. In my heart, I replay hurtful conversations; I am cistern, collecting disappointment. On the surface of the puddle, I can see the sky, the tops of trees, and in the dirty water, it all looks bleak.

How did Jesus manage life’s pain, all the dirt clots shattering over his shoulders, everything gradually falling apart? I’ve wondered this, staring at parchment pages. How did Jesus, with his real skin, his real sweat, his real life in this broken place, keep believing his own body would not see decay (Acts 13:34-37)? How did Jesus keep faith in the resurrection?

He looked up.

Here I am, heavy staring at my feet, and the answer comes, quiet. In my mind, I’m flipping pages, something Ann Voskamp wrote about how Jesus turned his eyes, “always first the eyes, the focus (One Thousand Gifts Devotional, 155).” Jesus looked up to heaven. Always habitually remembering, Jesus finished Abraham’s up-glance to the ram in the thicket (Genesis 22:13). It’s a gesture of faith, that turning the eyes heavenward. Up-looking eyes search faithfully for God’s wild provision and find it, as joy set before them, even crowned with thorns. He looked up. It’s a repetitive phrase in the gospel, but still easy to miss. It begins by turning my eyes.

So, I look up now, like the bleary-eyed man Jesus’ healing fingers have touched (Mark 8:24), and everywhere I see full-leafed trees turning dark, living water coursing through their trunks. I see a royal sky, vast like God, with no edges I can find. I see the sun, glowing low and golden at the crest of the hill, bathing the stretch ahead in light. I look up, fixing my eyes, holding the heavy now in the palms of my hands, and I give thanks, like Jesus did. Always first the looking up, then the thanks.

Cheeks sun-gilded, I give thanks for small things, for momentous things, for every day ordinary joys. But I haven’t yet searched the thicket. I haven’t yet looked through suffering to joy. So I go back to the puddle and give thanks for the rain, and I go back to those old conversations and give thanks for the people I’ve had a chance to love until it hurts. And still thinking of Jesus, I sacrifice my need to justify myself. Because instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly (1 Peter 2:24).

And that’s when the weight in my hands falls flat in the muddy road, and I begin to walk light.

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