Eyes on you

“Do you see the person who assaulted you in this room?” the lawyer asked the young woman on the stand in the small, quiet court room. In front of her, to her right, at a large table, sat the defendant, but she had not once glanced in his direction during the hours of her testimony.

“Yes,” she answered the lawyer.

“Can you point this person out to the jury?” the lawyer continued.

“Yes,” she answered again. There was a pause. Slowly she turned to her right. Another pause. And then she looked the defendant straight in the eye. She raised her arm and said determinedly, “He’s sitting right there, at that table.”

It felt as though everyone in the court room silently gasped. As though looking him in the eye was the ultimate conviction.

For class, I sat in on an attempted murder trial yesterday, and was fascinated by the procedure and moved by the fact that the victim and the defendant were sitting within feet of each other. Mere feet! After such horrible things had occurred between them (to be fair, sentences have yet to be made).

The victim had been kidnapped and raped, and during the ordeal, was told by her assailant numerous times, as they walked along streets and in and out of a few public places, that she was making eye contact with too many people. He feared her eyes would reveal what was going on. That she, in fact, was in grave danger. And he's probably right. They would have!

The eye is so revealing and so crazy. I mean even Darwin was a little hung up on it, admitting that the eye was the one thing he had a hard time jiving with his evolution theory. He said that “the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.”

For real though Darwin! I hear ya. I mean the blinking, the pupil, the iris, eyelashes?! Tear ducts? What the heck! I was thinking that its amazing-ness lies both in what it’s able to take in, but also give out. Eyes have the ability to see light, shapes, texture, etc. And at the same time, have the ability to emit love, understanding, humor, or in the case of the victim yesterday—hatred and accusation. But either way, the eye provides meaning to what it takes in and gives out.

Psalm 33:18 says, “But the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him, on those whose hope is in his unfailing love...”

I’m sure God is raising His eyebrows at me a lot, but I’m so thankful He’s looking at me. In His eyes, there is meaning to my life.