There are videos that you can find on social media that show a new product from a view years ago – eyeglasses that give people who are colorblind the ability to see colors. The videos show people’s reactions when they put the glasses on for the first time. The anticipation and suspense for the viewer may be even more than for the person putting on the glasses! Finally, the moments arrive, and it’s worth the wait. Everyone says some words that grasp at being beyond words: “Wow!” “Oh my goodness!” “So this is what everything looks like!” Their body physically reacts as the old grey-scale reality disappears and a world of color floods in: their breathing accelerates, they move their body around. One grown man simply clasps his hands and looks around like a 3 year old boy discovering the world for the first time. And every person breaks down and cries. I myself cried watching it.
Seeing the world as it really is for the first time, with all its beauty, is beyond words.
Some 16 years or so ago, I had my own experience of a great pause that gave me time to re-think myself and my life and my relationships. Gradually, I was beginning to see things differently, and it culminated with a deep experience of letting the past go in God’s forgiveness. When I rose up from that experience, it was like I could see the world in color for the first time, in all its beauty. Everything was new. I was like a 3-year-old seeing reality for the first time. And I couldn’t stop crying tears of awe and joy as I began to process it, to take it all in. I began to go around, I couldn’t stop moving – I don’t know how to explain it. In fact, I looked for ways to put it into words, and could never find them. It had to come out through all of my body, not just my mouth. And it couldn’t just be a one-time thing, it had to keep going without end. Everything that you’re reading comes from that experience. Everything that I’ve spoken and written since then comes from it. In fact, everything that I’ve done with my life since then is my best effort to express it. It goes beyond words.
When the Holy Spirit comes at Pentecost, it’s when the disciples put on the glasses and see reality in color, as God see it. That’s the reason that they couldn’t stop moving and speaking in all languages. It’s why believers have not stopped moving or talking since. It’s why they’ve gone out to live life a different way, trying with all their being to express what they now see – and they can never complete it.
Truly, to see the marvelous beauty of reality the way God sees it is something that changes a person forever.
It’s beyond words.
As the Father has sent me, so I send you. (Jn 20:21)
ALM 