May those who love you rejoice when they see me.
One day I stepped through the doors of my counseling offices in Fairfax, Virginia, my mind busy with thoughts long forgotten. But what I will never forget was the following scene:
I was met by one of our therapists, coming down the hall. On seeing me, her hand went to her mouth, her eyes widened and the notepad she was carrying dropped to the floor. She exclaimed “Oh!” as if she had seen a ghost, and stepped back as if she had been slapped; wobbling slightly, as if she might faint.
“Sue!” I cried. “Are you ok?” I was very concerned.
Her hand still at her mouth in shock, she said, “Can you see yourself?” She must have seen the total puzzlement on my face; “Paul, you are clothed with an aura!” My wife, Bonnie, stepped from the administrative office and took Sue’s arm. She looked at me, equally puzzled. This had to be a joke. Sue had to be playing a joke. I smiled. Bonnie laughed her usual delightful laugh – a little nervously, perhaps.
I walked quickly down the hall, out the office complex doors to the restroom across the hallway. I looked in the mirror. No “aura.”
Sue could never explain what she saw, but she was emphatic and determined. “I’m not crazy!” said she. “I know what I saw. It was an aura, a beautiful multi-colored aura.”
As for me? Well, I have never seen such an aura. I have never felt aura-rized. As long as I have lived, no one else has ever said anything about it. Some of my male professional friends kidded me for weeks afterward. I don’t know what my esteemed colleague saw, except what she said she saw, but I have opinions.
Such an experience might provoke one to ask, “How might others truly feel when they see me, or hear from me?”
The reason this is a good question is that its answer probably reflects the impact we have on others. It may well reflect how another sees the Lord Jesus in our lives; indeed, in our very presence.
It is also a good thing to dip the stick of our effectiveness for Christ into the oil of our spirituality and ask ourselves plainly, “Do people see Jesus in me? Or do they see . . . something else?”
Never mind the aura.
Let me suggest how others most certainly will see Jesus in you. Let me suggest how, when others see you, they will rejoice as the scrap of Scripture above implies.
If when they see you, or me, they say to themselves, “This person loves me. This person makes me feel loved, accepted and affirmed.” Because that is exactly how Jesus makes them feel.
That is what I want others to feel when they see me. I want them to feel loved. But you know something? -- They will never see God’s love for them where I am concerned, unless they first see -- that I love them.
Someday, after mastering winds, waves, tides and gravity, we shall harness the energy of love; and for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire. -- Pierre Teilhard De Chardin
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