Keep Me as the Apple of Your Eyes

The divine is rooted in the everyday. But it is only visible through common sense. This is one of the tools that the divine gifted to humanity to manifest itself to those who seek. The souls have the key, but they despair because they cannot find the veiled lock in front of them

Photo by Arteum.ro on Unsplash

The transcendent is hidden in the ordinary, in the simplicity and straightforwardness of the incessant natural becoming like the wind through the trees and the flowing river, the song of the birds and the waves of the ocean. The subtle and almost imperceptible movement of the vital is an expression of immensity. Although this has been repeated ad nauseam, it does not cease to be true. The insistence of the drop on the stone is what breaks it, likewise the persistence of the obvious on reason is what softens it and awakens the heart. The certainty of habit conceals the axiom of mystery.

Discovering it, removing the cloak that divides today from eternity, is the greatest achievement that can be aspired to. By removing the veil, the most absolute happiness that the human being can access appears. Being able to “see beyond appearances”. The facade is not like a created, fictitious, and enslaving Matrix that chains us to life to drain the surplus value of our effort. The only chains we must break are those that cling to the arrogance of believing that we understand when we do not perceive anything.

Any labor done with love is brighter than a galaxy of trillions of stars. It is a fallacy that happiness is “later”, that it awaits us “ahead” in a future that seems never to arrive. Wholeness is here, a “leap of faith” away, a subtle step that will reveal what is hidden within reality.

‘Keep me as the apple of your eyes’ sings the psalmist asking God for help. The pupil is the dilatable and contractile center of the eye, almost like a mysterious black hole in the cosmos. The pupil lets light into the eye. The pupil looks after the retina, telling it how much light will enter. The day is the pupil of eternity. It works for the perpetual, and it should! Whoever penetrates the pupil of everyday life enters the retina of eternity. Who fully dares to die today becomes immortal. Here and now is the secret of the hundredfold multiplication, it does not exist in any other place or time. You must work tirelessly to find that hidden happiness in today.

That is the vital parable. Jesus refers to work in 32 of the 37 parables that he expresses in the Gospels. To make the impossible understandable, Jesus explains it in an understandable and practical way. In the parables Jesus relates the divine with something concrete, practical and quotidian. Because God always works and Jesus did it throughout his life, but especially in the years of silence in Nazareth. Work is not a sentence, the penalty is fatigue, lack of joy and meaning in working. God cursed the ground, not the work. He did not insult effort but fatigue.

God works manually, routinely and silently. He doesn’t get tired; he does everything with meaning and joy and it gives him infinite happiness to work. Jesus, the union of divinity and everyday life, is humble and obedient. He loves to work. Holiness must be hidden behind what is ignored by the world, it is in what does not attract attention, in the imperceptible task. People who don’t tell us anything extraordinary, who are simple and good without pomposity, hide tiny bits of heaven. In the imperceptible silence of the rite, of the daily task, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob hides, as the Son of God in his “wood craftsman” workshop.

To meet God, it is necessary to fall in love again with the routine, with that seemingly insignificant repetition of things that seem to make no sense. In that love of tedium, in that always doing the same thing, the mystery of divine nature is revealed. May fatigue does not discourage the mission! Because God likes those who show up, he likes people who show up without fail. He needs willing people, and the first disposition of the soul is to take a step today. Nothing more is needed. God asks for nothing else.

Each day we can cooperate with God, fulfilling our design and destiny at work. Work is a permanent feature of God’s plan, not the result of the Fall into sin.*

• *EXAMINING JESUS’ INCLUSION OF WORK ROLES IN HIS PARABLES. Klaus Issler, PhD