In Your Eyes
John Fischer

I received a letter from a dear friend yesterday. The writer of the letter and her husband were the most influential people in my life during my formative, twentysomething years. Though our contact has become limited due to time and distance, they remain to be those kinds of friends you can revisit and pick up right where you left off, no matter how long it's been.

Her letter to me was prompted by reading my latest book, which is confessional in nature, and she revealed to me that she read it exactly as I would want a book like this to be read: “I laughed, I cried, I searched my heart.” Writers don't write about themselves because they think anyone actually cares that much. They are banking on the fact that in the process of wrestling something out of their own darkness, they can connect with that which is common to someone else. Doesn't have to be everybody, either. Just somebody. My friend, Anne Marie, became that “somebody” when she said, “I searched my heart.” I couldn't want for anything more.

Which, by the way, is also the nature of these devotionals. I have received comments from some of you who are not sure about my devotional style, and I understand that, because Oswald Chambers I am not. There are traditional devotionals, and more reflective ones, which is where I take my cue, taking ordinary daily events and observations and discovering God’s purposes in my own experience of these things. But to get the true benefit, you have to take the next step as Anne Marie did. You have to search your own heart. God forbid that it stops with me.

But it was what she said at the end of her note that really knocked me out. “However, I don't see you as being dysfunctional.” (That had been one of my confessions.) “You know John, when I look at your photo on the back of the book, and I look in those eyes, all I see is Jesus.”

Oh boy… this is what friends are for, and why we all need fellowship. We need those in our lives, who, because of their own faith and love — and perhaps due in part to their ability to overlook our flaws — can look in our eyes and see nothing but Jesus. We'll never get through without receiving this, as well as being these eyes for someone else.

PDL