Look Up ~

Things aren’t always as they appear.

It makes me think of that warning on a car’s side-view mirror: Objects in mirror are closer than they appear. What you’re seeing is real, but the distance is distorted. The same is true in the season I’m walking through now. Everything that should feel like peace, help, and support somehow feels like anxiety, danger, and estrangement instead. I keep trying to reason it out, but the more I stare at it, the more warped it looks.

Then worship shifts the lens. Just a small turn toward Jesus, and the distortion starts to clear. He gives beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness (Isaiah 61:3). In worship, the mirror straightens and I remember to look up.

Saturday in that hospital room, I thought I was the strong one—the one coming to help. But maybe the message belonged to Richard. When the sedation lifted and his eyes opened wide, he didn’t fight the restraints that keep him safe while intubated. He didn’t thrash or struggle. He just looked up. At first I thought it was bewilderment about what all has happened, but maybe it was awe. Maybe he was seeing something I couldn’t see. Each time I would bring up key points I knew he would be concerned about—his dog, his home, the people who love him—he looked at me, nodded, and then turned his gaze upward again.

Now I realize he might have been preaching the simplest sermon of all: Look up.

Don’t look around for answers or backward for explanations—just look up.

Sometimes the message isn’t in what we say, but in where we look.
When everything feels distorted, lift your eyes. The view may change, but peace remains — because the One we look to never shifts beneath us.

Richard is always spreading the Word of God. We used to go to the grocery store and it would take us forever to get out because he’d strike up a conversation with someone in the checkout line about the goodness of the Lord and end up sharing the gospel. He did that a lot. And I’m proud to know that even here, he might still find ways to bring the presence of Jesus to those who need it. On Saturday, that person was me.

I credit Richard with teaching me how to pray twenty-two years ago—no, he made me pray. As a new Christian I was unsure, nervous, wet behind the ears, and scared to death to pray out loud. Anyone who knows him knows he’s such a funny guy and a cut-up, but he would get so serious in that moment and say, “No, this is important. You are going to be a prayer warrior.” I still feel that so deeply today. He saw something in me that I couldn’t fathom. I’m so grateful that he encouraged me to learn to do what I’m doing so hard for him today.

And in the middle of the chaos of the weekend, I caught a different view of the husband who once taught me how to pray, and the husband who now prays for me as I lift the other up to the Lord. One introduced me to intercession; the other covers me in it. Both have shown me the kind of love that keeps pointing back to Jesus. And the fact that we are all close and help each other out in times like this says more than words possibly can. But I will say simply, I’m so grateful.

Honestly, in moments like this, I don’t know how people navigate life without Jesus. Because without Him, pain would just feel like pain. But with Him, even sorrow carries a pulse of hope — the assurance that this isn’t the end, and that every prayer still echoes in eternity.

Hope doesn’t take the storm away; it reminds me Who speaks peace right in the middle of it. He is still the God who answers by fire. I only have to look up.