Nothing?

"Is it Nothing to you?"

Just one little phrase in the almost forgotten little book of Lamentations -
the lamentations of the prophet Jeremiah
living in the time of God's rejection 
of those who were called to be His people.

It is a book of pain and pathos,
a book written in the presence of unutterable and immeasurable  loss.

"Is it Nothing?"
     This is the cry of Jerusalem, 
          the cry of Jeremiah, 
               the cry of God.

From the depths of hurt, and pain, the cry is to those who are passing by -
     those who are oblivious to the desolation -
          going somewhere, doing something, important to them.

Maybe the state of the world, and perhaps of the church,
     could be summed up in one word: Unawareness.

It is easy to say, "we see" as the Jews did in Jesus' day.
Yet it is possible to be as unaware of blindness as was the church at Laodicea.

It is possible to be as unaware as the Jews, and their priests, 
when they mocked the One Who was separated from God on the cross,
bearing the depths of the pain of their separation from God.

Both the Old and the New Testaments speak much of sight and of light,
but also both Testaments speak of blindness and darkness.

There is nothing so tragic as a person who is unaware -
     the blind man traveling through a world which is hidden to him,
          or the deaf man surrounded by sounds whose significance he cannot perceive.

Jesus came to open the eyes of the blind, "to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death." (Luk. 1.79)
    This is the gift of Awareness.
          Here is to be found the answer the question, "is it nothing?"  

This is where with open eyes we can see what God shows, 
     and feel the pulse of His heart.

Here that which was "nothing" to us,  
     becomes "everything" to us.
          And we Live because we See.