Brother Scaggs and the Upward Gaze

I recently saw an article about people whose dogs looked like their owners. I don’t think it can be called an article when it’s just a baited title and pictures, but it’s a small, small attention span after all. The pictures got me thinking about how you really do become what you behold. You will adopt the mannerisms of the ones who populate your inner circle.

My dad recently brought home a device that counts his steps. At the end of the day he can sit down with a colorful graph and witness his activity. Marketers have conducted studies by tracking consumer’s eye movements across an advertisement. If scientists ever track down which part of our body hosts our soul, I think it would be helpful to research a device that would track its gaze throughout the day.

Because I think about a diverse list of things across the day. My thoughts can range from impending lunch to questions of faith, from a blister on my left toe to Coldplay lyrics. Brother Lawrence talked about how he tried to reign in his wandering mind and fix it just on Christ. I have often yearned for this. Inwardly I long to truly fix my eyes on Jesus, the Author, Perfecter, and really the only True thing worth beholding.

“Distractions may hinder, but once the heart is committed to Him, after each brief excursion away from Him the attention will return again and rest upon Him like a wandering bird coming back to its window.”- A. W. Tozer

If a dog does actually begin to look like its master over time, I imagine it is an effortless act. If I begin to talk and think like my friends it is rarely because I am making a conscious effort to imitate them. Instead I allow their mannerisms and thought patterns to invade me by pure osmosis. When the gaze of my unveiled soul is fixed on Jesus, the very picture of God’s nature, I will become like him.

So it seems that all that is really required of me is that I just show up. I’m very thankful that it’s been this way from the start. I’m not called to struggle and sweat to be like Christ, but just to fall deeper in love with all He is until I will gladly deny myself just to get closer to Him.

“Now, if faith is the gaze of the heart at God, and if this gaze is but the raising of the inward eyes to meet the all-seeing eyes of God, then it follows that it is one of the easiest things possible to do. It would be like God to make the most vital thing easy and place it within the range of possibility for the weakest and poorest of us.” -A. W. Tozer

When a boy is in love, he will think about a girl all day long. He will show up for work and frame walls and sand sheetrock for ten hours and think only of her. When he is near her he will glance only as often as is socially acceptable until he has to steal his looks unnoticed. It’s like a knot in the gut.

“Lift up your heart to Him, sometimes even at your meals, and when you are in company; the least little remembrance will always be acceptable to Him. You need not cry very loud; he is nearer to us than we are aware of.” -Brother Lawrence

It’s very possible that Boz Scaggs was channeling the longing spirit of Brother Lawrence when he penned the words:

I want to be near you
I want to hear what you have to say
As long as I’m near you
Nothing will seem to pass away

Often when I am hiking a trail in the mountains, I remind myself to look up. I can get so caught up with what is directly in front of my feet that I miss something beautiful that was there all along. I will choose to look up.

“When the habit of inwardly gazing Godward becomes fixed within us we shall be ushered onto a new level of spiritual life more in keeping with the promises of God and the mood of the New Testament. The Triune God will be our dwelling place even while our feet walk the low road of simple duty here among men. We will have found life’s summun bonum indeed.” -A. W. Tozer