“See, Name, Speak, and Bless”
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We are here, O God, waiting to hear your word. Help us recognize your voice as we listen for your guidance. Search our hearts and open them to your call. We are ready for your word of love. Amen.

This month we’ve talked about following a star as we reflect on what God speaks to us through a particular word as well as other means of grace. And last week we took time to be invited to renew our covenant of our covenant as we think about our baptism and Jesus’ baptism. Today we read the text Jesus invites his first disciples. Today we read all four readings and we can see all our readings for the second Sunday after the Epiphany are all about seeing.

In the book of 1Samuel, we encounter the priest, Eli, whose physical and spiritual eyesight has grown so dim, he cannot see what’s right in front of him. The Psalmist describes a God who searches and sees us, a God who probes our secret thoughts, words, and ways, a God who beholds us when we’re still unformed “in the depths of the earth.” In Paul’s letter to the troubled Corinthians, he urges his readers to see themselves rightly, to understand that their bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, not cheap and to use for our own purposes, but sacred vessels bought at a high price for the glory of God. And in our Gospel reading, Jesus sees Nathanael, sees into his heart, sees who he is and what he needs, under a fig tree, prompting Nathanael, the skeptic, to look past his stereotypes, and see Jesus for who he really is: the Son of God. So, if we look at them closely, seeing is in a common thread.