The Magic Eye and Grace

The following is from Envoy Magazine;
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Well…you basically see an interesting design — nice to look at, maybe a bit eye-catching, but nothing you’d want to look at for more than a minute or so. Then, you completely relax and let your eyes go out of focus. It helps to hold it a couple inches from your face, where it’s automatically blurred, and then pull it away slowly, keeping your focus blurred. If you’re patient, a three-dimensional image will come into the foreground, with the original design staying in the background. It’s pretty amazing. I don’t know how they do it, but it’s great!

It sure is, and it really is a fantastic analogy for Christianity — for the very heart and soul of Christianity, which is the experience of God’s own Trinitarian life dwelling right within us. Think about it for a minute. The reality of grace indwelling within a person is not something immediately visible, is not part of what is “natural” to a person. If you see a human being walking down the street, and even see that person do a good deed for someone, you don’t see grace at work. You see the individual’s physical nature, and then you see a morally good act. You see someone following natural physical laws and natural moral laws, but you don’t know from that whether or not sanctifying grace indwells a person.

In fact, if you did know that grace existed in that person, and tried to explain it to someone who didn’t understand it, it would be very difficult — just like explaining the magic eye to someone who had no clue about it!

Aha! You’ve picked up the analogy perfectly! Note that once you’ve experienced grace, you realize that it is more real than the natural world, and that the natural world is really just the surface of reality. Nothing against the natural world; it’s truly good and beautiful in its own right. But a whole new adventure awaits each of us beneath the surface of the natural world, and that’s the dynamic adventure of the life of grace, the adventure of living one’s entire life in the presence of and in light of that mystery.
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http://www.envoymagazine.com/backissues/5.2/magiceye.htm