Release Date: April 1st, 2026Eyes Open, Eyes Closed
- by Brent Musser
When I am with the gathered church, I often close my eyes during worship. I do it during prayers, but also during songs and during the sermon. I do it, I think, to help my concentration, to establish a connection with the divine, to listen carefully to a thread of thought I picked up in a song or in a message of good news. It is a way of closing off the chamber of my mind so I can hear God’s Spirit. It helps me listen.
Recently I have been reflecting more on why I close my eyes. Could it actually represent a retreat from “the world as it is” into “the world of my imagination,” the world as I want it to be, a world in which I can keep out what I find challenging and uncomfortable? What don’t I hear because my eyes are closed?
The Epistle of James says that listening is important. “Know this, my dear brothers and sisters: everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to grow angry.” (1:19 CEB). James also uses language of seeing to address how we pay attention to God. The person will be blessed who “looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it – not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it” (1:25 NIV). “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress” (1:27 NIV).
God is present where there is distress, injustice, violence and upheaval.
Sometimes, I think, we need to listen with our eyes wide open. We need to know something of what is happening in the world (and I am thinking here primarily of the hard things): in geopolitics, in climate, in economics, in our communities, in the lives of our neighbours. Seeing these things helps us listen to God because God is present where there is distress, injustice, violence and upheaval.
We can close our eyes and encounter the God within.
Sometimes we also need to listen with our eyes closed. It is so easy to see and quickly speak, that is, to quickly pronounce judgment, and then to quickly act in anger. But James says, be quick to listen. Listen to what? James advises us “to welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls” (1:21 NRSV). One thing we are to listen to is the word planted within. We can close our eyes and encounter the God within. It is an opportunity, if only for a time, to release our judgments and engage in Spirit-led imagination, or scripture inspired reflection, allowing God’s love for us and others to re-shape our vision of the world.
Listening with eyes open keeps us connected to lived experience and God present in that experience. Listening with eyes closed provides space for God to re-shape our perception of lived experience with glimpses of the hope of Resurrection and New Creation.
- Brent Musser is an ordained MCEC pastor and Facilities and Environmental Stewardship Director at Hidden Acres Mennonite Camp.