Invisible Reality

If you were born blind and therefore had never seen a tree, it would be difficult for you to imagine what a tree looks like, even if someone were to describe this plant to you. Although the trees are tall, beautiful and majestic, you cannot see them and you would doubt their expressive splendour.

Imagine if someone showed you a picture of the shadow of a tree. You could see it with your poor eyesight. For the first time you would be able to guess what a tree looks like. You wouldn't know the color of the leaves, the texture of the bark, or other details, but you would be able to visualize a tree and be able to develop a vocabulary to talk about it. You would also have solid proof that trees are real, even if you don't know and understand everything about them.

In this picture, God is the tree and Jesus is the one showing his shadow to mankind. Jesus, who is fully God, revealed the Father, himself as the Son of God, and the Spirit in a way that we can begin to understand, and it is growing. There is much we cannot know about God, but Jesus has shown us enough for us to begin to understand how great, beautiful, and majestic He is.

At the same time, we must humbly acknowledge that we only see a shadow of reality at best. Therefore faith is necessary. Faith is a gift from God (John 6,29) In following Jesus Christ, we are equipped to believe in things that we cannot understand logically or perceive with our senses. The author of Hebrews speaks about faith and writes: “Now faith is the firm confidence of what is hoped for, and not doubting what is not seen. In this faith the ancients [ancestors] received God's testimony. By faith we come to know that the world was created by God's word, that everything seen came from nothing" (Hebrews 11,1-3).

Here we are challenged to change our understanding of reality. Rather than defining reality by what we can perceive, we are encouraged to see God as the foundation of all reality. “He [God] delivered us out of the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, where we have redemption, which is the forgiveness of sins. He [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation" (Colossians 1,13-15).

Jesus, who is the image of God, invites us to reflect God's reality, to make it more real and visible. We cannot see or touch unconditional love, mercy, grace and joy, but these qualities have eternal value. Even though God's nature is invisible, He is real as Father, Son and Holy Spirit because they do not perish like the material things we perceive in this world.

When we seek the unseen riches of God, we are less affected by the things we can see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. We are more influenced by the Holy Spirit than we can see. Because we are connected to Jesus Christ in an intimate relationship, we live in his faith and become what we are really meant to be, in his image. No amount of earthly wealth can bring about that.

He gave us a glimpse of what it means to live as God expects of us. Jesus is the true Son of man - he shows us what it means to live in fellowship with Father, Son and Spirit. When we fix our eyes on Jesus, we can have confidence that the gift of eternal life in His kingdom and all that God has in store for us is greater than we can imagine.

by Heber Ticas