In my last blog I mentioned the difference between commodity-driven and value-driven organisations. One corollary of this distinction is the difference between what is visible – a commodity/the money – and what is invisible – a value/the truth. We can see or handle money; but a value – for example, truth – we cannot see or handle.
For some people, then, it is only what we can see which has importance or meaning; but the reality is exactly the other way round. It is what we cannot see – it is what is invisible – that is truly significant in our lives.
In fact to see the invisible is the beginning of faith, and faith leads to confidence (Latin: con – with, fidence – faith), and confidence leads to success and achievement.
One of the most profound examples of this is the question of 'love'. We cannot see 'love', although everybody wants it (and those few who don't have abandoned hope as well as love), but we seek it in others. We want to believe another person loves us. And the popular songs have it right: money can't buy (me) love, and love is more precious than money. Without love we wilt inside.
Thus, the invisible determines the outcomes of our lives, yet many of us remain steadfastly committed to believing only what we can 'see' – which is so limited.
In the spiritual traditions of the world Moses was a great prophet. His adventures are described in detail and at length in the Old Testament, or Torah, but the most staggering statement of all about him surely comes in the New Testament when it answers the question of how did he accomplish so much, against such overwhelming odds (the Israelites v. Pharaoh and the Egyptians; think in today's terms: Belgium v. the USA!)?
“He endured”, it says (Heb 11.27), “because he saw Him who is invisible.” Can you see, can you feel, the inherent contradiction in that statement? He saw the invisible – which by definition you cannot see.
We experience that power when we see the invisible here: the love, the truth and hope that is all around us and in the nature of things. The Egyptian Heaven and Hell says exactly the same thing: “All the world which lies below has been set in order and filled in contents by the things which are placed above; for the things below have not the power to set in order the world above. The weaker must yield to the stronger; and the system of things on high is stronger than the things below.”
The Mapping Motivation Series 