"So, how was Christmas? What did you get?"
"A little fishy!" He answered with excitement in his face.
"What color is it?"
"He's got lots of colors, but he looks kinda brown."
"And you spend lots of time looking at him, and you give him food, right?"
"Yep!"
"And you watch how he goes after it and you see all his movements... You know, God is like that all day too, but with you!"
"Oh! I'm his little fishy!"
The mystery of this truth is perhaps something to be pondered, a truth which is affirmed in repeated occasions throughout the Bible. The Jewish people were so convinced of this reality that they often referred to God as "He who sees".
Is our sight similar to God's?
How is our sight? Our sight is the sense that gives us most information. The world that spreads before our sight is greater than what we can touch, smell, hear or taste. However, most of the things in this world we cannot or will not get to see. Some are too far away and our sight doesn't reach. Others are so big I cannot behold them. If I stand before an enormous mountain, I can see it partially, but there are other sides that are hidden to me; also I lack detail in my view. Other things are too small for me to perceive them and only with the help of powerful microscopes can I expect to see them.
How is God's sight? God sees everything. Each and every star in the sky. The oceans in all their expanse, mountains, valleys and plains. The immense and the tiny realities of our cosmos. All is under the watch of God.
God sees everything that occurs in every place in the world at this moment, as well as all that has happened in the past. Long before there were men on earth.
But that's not all. "Man looks at appearances, but God looks at the heart." (Ephesians 4, 6). In man there is an external life and an internal life. Normally what is manifested externally is determined by our internal lives: a smile manifests my happiness, an insult manifests my anger, and attentive eyes manifest my interest. I can say yes, while thinking no. I can say I'm sorry while promising vengeance. I can give a friendly hand, while my heart hates. I can bother when my intention is to help. But God looks at the heart, what is hidden and not manifested externally. There are neither gestures nor lies that hide anything from God's sight.
Does God see intentions?
You'll remember having seen the graphic plans of our earth's stratus, from the surface of the earth to the center. There are layers and layers, each of distinct thickness. When people look for oil, they descend deep, going through layer and layer until reaching the precious liquid.
The motives and reasons for which I act, the intentions with which I move... these things give meaning to my actions. In these motives, reasons or intentions lies a situation a little similar to our earth's layers: There are superficial motivations behind which other, deeper ones lie.
Until where does God see?
"Now I realize that all my efforts to do what was good, in the end I was doing them in order to be the best and win the admiration of others."
"I am confused. I think many of the things I thought I was doing for others, in reality, I was doing them for myself, to ease my conscience, to forget my problems by just worrying about something else."
It is frequent to hear these words from the mouths of people that seek the truth about themselves. They are real phrases, which manifest that in our actions there are distinct motivations which are present simultaneously. While all of them may be true, some are deeper than others.
A person might perform a service for another. If we ask that person why he did that favor, he might reply that he did it in order to help someone else. By answering this, he is not lying to us. But if we ask him to look further down, perhaps he might realize that what he wants is to cover the need to feel useful. And if he looks further down, perhaps there might be vanity. It�s very possible that even vanity might not be the deepest motive and that more, distinct motivations may be discovered, some that are even surprising to the person that realized that action.
Behind a single motive, others lie, mingling together amongst themselves until they form a group of motives, in which there might be many, many factors involved, from our current mood to noble desires, well-intentioned feelings or disguises and hypocrisy. Who could penetrate with their eyes all the interior of man, in each one of their acts?
To man, this is seriously difficult. In many occasions, only God could be capable of knowing the intimate truth. Gabrielle Bossis tells us that God made her realize this phrase: "I am more and deeper within you than you yourself" ('He and I', Balmes, Barcelona 1997, pg. 36). Indeed it is this way. God looks right into our interior. He knows the origin, cause and the distinct motivations.
How often do we not even know how to express what we want? And how many other times do we not know what is happening to us, or how something could have affected us in a certain way. God sees all this as well. Nothing is hidden from his sight. That's why, in truth, all things in this world are the way that God sees them: before God all is bare, as it really is.
God sees all, in particular and in its togetherness, in its origin and development, in its beginning and its end, in its intention and its execution, in its interior and its manifestation.
