Invisible

I had lunch with someone I hadn’t seen since childhood today and she put into words something I’ve had a hard time getting from my head onto paper. She said being divorced with kids made her invisible when she went to church. Yes, I thought, that’s it exactly. After attending the same church for years I found myself separated from my husband and suddenly invisible.

Not all churches treat broken families as if they somehow were less than there but they may make invisible teenagers, people who don’t dress to their standards or those who like me are less than young.

There are invisible people all around us. Oh they’re there all right but if we pretend they aren’t then we don’t have to go out of our way to deal with them. You know, they might want something from us or perish the thought be in some kind of need and we really don’t want to deal with that.

We are the church, the bride of Christ and we have taken erasers out instead of magnifying glasses. As the Brand Heath song says:

Give me your eyes for just one second
Give me your eyes so I can see,
Everything that I keep missing,
Give your love for humanity.
Give me your arms for the broken-hearted
The ones that are far beyond my reach.
Give me Your heart for the ones forgotten.
Give me Your eyes so I can see

God give us the will to not only look but to see with your eyes and with your arms reach out and make those whose lives are broken visible. Even the most broken of us are valuable in God’s eyes and deserve to be seen.