They say that hindsight is always 20-20.  I suspect “they” may be right.  We bumble through the task or circumstance and leave debris scattered in a wide path.  Then the next week we take a look back.  “Ah, now I see!” we say.  Then we plan a different approach for the next encounter.  At least we’ve “learned our lesson.”  Too bad about the debris.

It seems we need to hear the call to look around NOW.  We need to reduce the debris.  Looking around NOW is a call to justice.  We need to see who is without food, shelter, health care and education.  We need to look NOW at our environment.  The words of Psalm 8 call us to a place of responsibility in the creation.  We need to look NOW and see who is left out, forgotten and invisible.  We need to listen and discern whose voice is not being heard.

Whenever I have an eye exam, they always test my peripheral vision. “Look forward and tell me when you see the marker on the left…Now on the right.”  When we’re plodding ahead with our eyes forward, how close does suffering and injustice have to get to us before we see it?  Who is jumping up and down to our left and right, trying to catch our eye, hoping we’ll stop and see and listen…and help?

Isaiah 60:5 tells us that when we see, we’ll be radiant!  Our heart will rejoice!  When the “glory of the Lord” has risen on us, we radiate compassion and justice. 

We look around to God’s people left and right, ahead and behind.  We can’t afford to look back later at a path littered with suffering, death and violence and see what we might have done.  We’re called to LOOK AROUND NOW. 

The world is waiting.  Our neighbors are waiting.  The poor are waiting.  The children and our gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered brothers and sisters are waiting.  People torn apart by war are waiting. 

If we’ll look around NOW, the waiting can be an Advent waiting rather than a “keep your fingers crossed” waiting.

Thanks be to God who yet comes to us that we might know life.