Does prayer change things? Or us? Or both?

The Hawk Eye of God

Apr 8, 07:55 AM

As I drove to church Easter morning, taking a winding back road, I saw a hawk alight atop an electric pole. It settled on its perch with a view of a meadow nearby. I had just been noticing redbud trees’ splashes of blooms, the luminous greening grasses, the puffy whiteness of the Bradford Pear blossoms, all framed by sketchy clouds and a morning’s blue sky.

As I caught that motion of the bird’s landing, I was not just looking around but thinking about what I was seeing, aware of all my eyes had to take in. And the glimpse prompted a sudden wondering moment about the power of the hawk’s vision.

If hawks can see a mouse from a mile away, as biologists claim, if their retinas have five times the sensing cells per square millimeter as humans, just what might the bird see? It’s no accident that we speak of a "hawk eye." And I imagine the hawk’s seeing has a sudden wild roughness to it: An instant of recognition launches the bird’s swooping arc to seize an animal in its talons, or a beetle in its bill.

My mind jumped to another level of seeing, too: I thought of Another’s transcendent view. How much the God who made the hawk eye’s visual acuity can see even more sharply, see more powerfully.

A God’s eye view, I guess one could say. A seeing eye that is not just aloft, but acute. Not just high above, but aware of the microscopic details, too.

Last evening, on the same road, but this time heading home, I caught sight of the hawk again. Not stationary, but soaring above, riding the winds. And I thought again of what it might see. How much its eyes, proportionally larger to head’s size than ours, can take in. And I think of how God, as I now live into this Easter season, this resurrection week, sees me--my little life and its moments. How what I do, what I worry about, what I hope for, doesn’t hide beyond his view. The grit and fine details rest in the range of a noticing gaze. And his eye, unlike the hawk’s, is not only keen, but also kind.