Faith is a way of seeing beyond and within realities. Is seeing believing or is believing a way to see? Faith allows us to see God in everything, and everything as rooted in God. This is where we and all human beings find their true identity rooted in God. So often we are looking for our identity elsewhere, sometimes in material things, often in other people. We want others to tell us who we are. Only God can do this. But we are not always sure that we want to go to God to find out who we are so we take flight in other things: unhealthy relationships, addictions, politics, TV, work-holism – things that can blunt our openness to God’s spirit at work within us – even an activism that focuses on good works and a clear social justice agenda can be an evasion from encountering God.

Jesus was never afraid of encountering people and in those many encounters recorded in the gospels we see that it is in that encounter with him that sinners are forgiven. In the light of his presence people become aware of the sacrament of their own lives. Outside that light it is so easy to become judgemental of oneself and others. As Jesus encountered people they changed their attitudes about themselves.  The man amidst the tombs who was into self-mutilation sees himself differently. The woman at the well is called to see herself in the light of Jesus not according to her past history. Saul the persecutor of Jesus becomes Paul the apostle when in the light of Jesus he sees himself differently.

 In our encounters with him, Jesus also gives us a changed vision of who we are and a changed attitude to ourselves and others. A good friend of mine often says “actions flow from attitudes” and our attitudes are changed by our encounters with Christ. In and through these encounters we are blessed and become a blessing for others.

These encounters with Christ lead to conversion. What does it mean to be converted? It doesn’t mean that everything in our lives is instantaneously repaired. Sin brings darkness into the world instead of light. At times we are comfortable with our blindness, we are very willing to put labels on others and dismiss them. Sin often flows from the fact that we cease to be grateful people. Gratitude is such an important feature of Christian life, the truly ‘normative’ way for the Christian. Sin is illness and can be cured. As my friend also says ‘Jesus meets us where we would rather not be, where we do not look so good but need to be found.’ Where might that be for us today?

Lent is a time for repentance. Repenting is coming to our senses about who we are in God’s eyes. This is the constant work of Jesus and grace as the light of Christ’s love shines upon us. It is true grace to know the irrevocable love of God who gives God-self to us. As the love of God is  a mystery so is the reality of sin in our lives. We always need to try to understand it. Therefore any glimpse or insight is a grace and being a grace is something that we can ask for.

We pray for this light. Here we are entering into an alternative understanding not judging according to our categories but coming with a desire to know God’s truth. To know God we must know sin, for loving mercy is a primary attribute of God. Perhaps we might pray this day to know God’s love and to know God’s forgiveness in our lives; a forgiveness that C.S. Lewis once described as “the inexcusable met by love.”