Making the Invisible Visible

The man lay on the table, face down, his palms placed squarely on the cold surface beside his slightly tilted head. He looked as if he were staring into an imaginary hole in the table. As if he had lost a coin in it. With his eye pressed against the surface, he was frozen as if waiting for something to happen.

In fact, he was waiting for something to happen. I had told him to stay in that position and not move until I could make his X-ray exposure. I was executing a relatively rare technique known as a Parieto-orbital oblique projection of the optic foramen using the Rhese method. The positioning had to be very precise to shoot through the foramen (hole) that the optic nerve travels through, an opening mere millimeters wide. Using everything I had learned about this structure, I imagined its location, its shape, and its orientation. I lined up everything for the shot and made the exposure. I placed the cassette in the computed image reader and began the painfully long sixty seconds it took for processing.

There are ways in which this is analogous to the Christian life, a life in which we are called to walk by faith and not by sight. Christians are called to see the unseen with the eyes of faith.

Hebrews 11:1 is clear that faith is “...the evidence of things not seen.”

In Hebrews 11:7, Noah was “warned of God of things not seen as yet,” and yet he "moved with fear" and got to work anyway.

In Hebrews 11:10, Abraham “looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” He left all he knew for something he had not seen yet.

In Hebrews 11:27, Moses “forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing him who is invisible.” This is one of my favorites in Hebrews 11 because Moses did not fear a king he could see, because he reverenced the King he could not see.

These men of faith had a type of vision that is increasingly rare as the days draw nigh to His return. "When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8).

What these men had was vision procured by the eyes of faith. They moved ahead with what God told them, no matter how bizarre it seemed to others around them because they were counting on the goodness and promises of God.

Interestingly, these men often struggled between seeing with eyes of faith and with the eyes in their heads. Abraham saw Hagar, and using his vision, rationalized a human way of accomplishing a God-given promise. Moses killed an Egyptian at first because, in his eyes, this is how a deliverer might do things. Those weak-faith moments caused problems for both of them.

One surprising character of Hebrews chapter 11 is Samson, who through most of his story seemed to operate exclusively by sight. He saw the Philistine woman and just had to marry her. He saw the honey and broke his Nazarite vow to get it out of a lion carcass. He saw the harlot and just had to spend the night. And he saw Delilah and ended up telling her all his heart.

Interestingly, Samson ended up in Hebrews 11 anyway, a chapter chronicling those who walked by faith, not by sight. How could he have ended up there? Perhaps it was because Samson did not see clearly until the eyes of faith were the only ones he had left. The eyes of his head had offended enough, and the Lord allowed them to be plucked out and cast from him (Matthew 18:9).

Perhaps there are far too many Christians trusting in their "gut instincts," or even worse, the collective wisdom of the world brought to you by Google.

There are often decisions Christians make that people of the world do not understand. Why would a man leave his home not knowing where God was sending him? Why would he nearly kill his son and offer him as a sacrifice? Why would a man build an ark in the middle of a plain? Why would a man give up royalty and riches in Egypt to suffer affliction with the people of God? They must have seen something others did not see. This was due to their faith.

By faith, they obtained a good report (Hebrews 11:2, 39). By faith, they pleased God (Hebrews 11:6). By faith, they endured the worst of things up to and including death (Hebrews 11:33-37). By faith, they were honored by God as people "of whom the world was not worthy" (Hebrews 11:38) despite the world thinking many of them were not worthy to live.

The writer of the book of Hebrews was dealing with Jewish converts reverting back to Judaism in order to be spared from persecution. These men of old were being held up as examples to them so that they would be encouraged to bear up under the things they were facing and not go back.

This kind of faith should be the aspiration of every Christian because it is a faith that gives endurance in testings. These believers faced scourgings, homelessness, being sawn asunder, and more. And it seems the average American Christian today is very quick to put what the Lord wants aside because it seems too difficult. God help us.

After the sixty seconds had passed, the x-ray image leaped forth onto my screen. There in the center was the optic foramen, perfectly shot through with no elongation, foreshortening, or distortion. How about that? Seeing the unseen enabled me to make the invisible eventually visible. I suppose there is a lesson in that somewhere.

“These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.” Hebrews 11:13