There is incredible power, transformative power in seeing people. Of all the tools that sacred agents have in our toolbox, of all the arrows we have in our quiver, this is one of the best. We could reach for it a lot more. But what is seeing people, and how is it powerful?
It’s easier understood from the other side. It’s an incredibly transformative moment to be seen. Think of a young musician or athlete who gets discovered. One moment they’re busking in a back lane, next they’re brought into a studio. One day they’re playing in the D Team, the next they’re training with the professionals. And subsequently they’re walking 100% taller. Someone has seen talent, seen value in them, and immediately they lift. Do you have personal experience of this? Your shoulder being tapped, someone telling you that they’ve seen you, heard you, noticed you, and they want you?
Certainly, there’s plenty of experience of the opposite – being overlooked, unwanted, invisible. Your efforts seeming meaningless and your story pointless. Your main position on the team being Left Right Out. That experience is powerful too – powerfully debilitating.
In the Scriptures, consider Hagar, Nathaniel and Zacchaeus – to name just a few. Each were stunned by the discovery that they were seen by God, spotted, known and valued. Think of the Parable of the Great Banquet, where the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame find themselves with an invitation, and ‘invisible’ people from the country back-blocks are wanted and sought out by the Master.
Whenever a sacred agent takes the time to see someone who’s otherwise overlooked, unremarkable, lost in the crowd, left out – and to show and tell them that they’re actually very important to God, known by Him and deeply wanted – we know we’re telling the truth. It’s something so very simple, but it begins with the spiritual discipline of seeing with God’s eyes – something to prayerfully cultivate and practice each day.
What a great truth to instil in young people – watch them light up and step up. But it’s hardly restricted to the young. How much more transformative, perhaps, for a person whose experienced decades of invisibility to discover being discovered? Of all the privileges of being sacred agents, isn’t this one of the best? And perhaps even one of the easiest.
