The eyes have it

Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying, ‘Lord, let your servant now depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation. (Luke 2:27-30) 

Crystal blue eyes, shining clear as an April morning, shimmer in memory when I hear Simeon’s name. I knew Simeon. I still know him and always will, except his name is not Simeon. It’s Eilert. But he is Simeon to me. Of all the souls I want to meet in that realm where tears are no more, Eilert is on the short list.

I want to look into his moist, blue eyes one more time. But I don’t need to wait. All I need to do is close my eyes and imagine old Simeon taking the infant Jesus in his arms and blessing God, his heart a fountain of gratitude.

For when I do, the face I see is Eilert’s … in the last hours of his life, his eyes as blue as the day I met him, his heart as generous, his words blessing me one last time as he had dozens of times before. As surely as Simeon held Jesus in his arms, Eilert held my heart in his.

‘Just know, we love you, and we love you a lot,’ he whispered. ‘But now it’s time for auf wedersehen.’ That was more than 40 years ago, or was it yesterday?

The old man’s heart, like Simeon, was a fountain of gratitude. He had seen what he needed to see, touched what he needed to touch, felt what he needed to feel to die in peace, knowing his life, the life of his people and the life of this crazy world rest in the hands of a Faithful Love, stronger than every death that was ever died or ever will be.

Eilert had tasted salvation in the beauty of the earth, the bounty of the soil, the goodness of love and the stories of Jesus he read from the worn Bible and devotionals lying on his kitchen chair.

His heart rested in peace in the early morning hours when eternity came to claim him, leaving me the holy privilege of closing his eyes on this earth for the last time.

Those eyes have lived in me all these years, and I suspect they always will. It was one of those moments that reveal your heart so clearly that the mind, so slow on the uptake, begins to understand what you most dearly want and need.

I want to see and touch and feel the faithful love of the One who is Love, the One held in Simeon’s arms and Eilert’s heart, the One who made their old eyes glisten with gratitude and so filled their hearts with words of blessing that they spilled out … even on the grossly unworthy, like me.

I want my eyes to shimmer with the secret of Love’s Living Presence that maybe, just maybe, I might bless someone as surely and profoundly as they continue to bless me. Maybe then, the Holy One will have some reasonable return on the great investment of love and wonder the Lord has poured out on me.

For I, too, have seen the Lord’s salvation, not least in the sparkle of old eyes alive with the Love who is everywhere present … and every moment for us.