Blessed to See

……"Blessed are the eyes that see what you see.” Luke 10:23

Today is the twentieth death anniversary of our brother Ely. It’s still vivid in my mind and heart when he died. I was about to get my first ever class cards in college when the news came to me as I reached home. And his death was brutal. He was shot in the head saying no to hooligans who were asking parcel of the construction materials of the project he was managing. And as he died, our father died too. You see, our brother maybe the best child parents would want to have. Kind, respectful, loving, self-less, God fearing and intelligent – that’s our brother Ely. He was even ranked 5th in his national civil engineering board exams. There was no day and night you could not feel the anguish and sadness which his death brought in our home. My father devoted his time in gaining justice from his death. He went with the police everyday to investigate the crime. Our father utilized every connection he knows to help us bring the culprits to prison. But to no avail.

And when he was about to give up, he was blessed to see. Our father told that once he was in the police car, the officers left their weapons in the car with him. This was the same instance where they visited the suspects in their houses. The thought of using the guns at that time crossed our father’s mind. He said in his mind, justice can be easily won by just going out of the police car and fire the gun at these suspects. Yet he saw there was justice which is not in his hands but in God’s hands. And he saw his wife and other seven children who are alive.

Up to now, we haven’t got justice from our brother’s death. Our parents have died not seeing justice heave from his death. If you search our hearts, I bet you will still see some pain and some feelings for retribution. However, we thank and praise God for blessing us with eyes to see what we see. We see life rather than death. We see hope rather than despair. We see the future rather than the past. We see completion rather than frustration. We see the light rather than the darkness. We see God’s mercy rather than human justice. We see God’s love greater than our pain and hate.

And these do not come easy in living our daily lives. But with God and His providence, we are blessed to have eyes to see what we see.