Isaiah 52:8 -- On Seeing Eye To Eye

"Thy watchmen shall lift up the voice; with the voice together shall they sing: for they shall see eye to eye, when the Lord shall bring again Zion."
Isaiah 52:8


What strikes me about this verse today is the "they shall see eye to eye" part.  Sometimes in our society it just seems so impossible that we will ever get to a point where we will all see things the same way, or even understand one another well enough to get along.  Society often seems like it is becoming more fractured and divisive rather than more cohesive and cooperative.  And it is easy to give up in a world like that... stop trying to make things better, since it seems impossible.  But God promises that he will bring Zion, and that everything will get better.  Not only will we see eye to eye, but apparently we'll sing together too, which is cool (it isn't only the watchmen... the next verse continues the singing).

I think this verse can give us some hope for the future... but more than that, it helps us to focus on Zion, and on some things that we need to do.  If we are all going to see eye to eye, does that mean that God is going to change everyone else's perspective to ours, and that we just need to sit around and wait for people to agree with us?  ... Probably not. :)  So, one thing that we need to do is learning how other people think, and start finding common ground with other people now.  Sure, we disagree about a lot of things, but when was the last time we actually worked on finding out what we have in common?  I think it is an important part of the conversation.  Who cares what we *don't* believe in... let's talk about what matters... what *do* we believe in?  What drives us?  What really matters to us?  If we know what drives the people around us, everything gets better... relationships at home, at work, at school, at church... and not only relationships, but projects, goals, accomplishments will be better because we understand and are working for things that we both believe in rather than just doing it for money or politeness or obligation or whatever.  Instead of worrying about defending our position, let's see what we can build with the commonalities between our positions.

Another thing we can do is work on getting to know the commonalities between ourselves and God. :)  When we see eye to eye someday, we'll have learned to see God's perspective so well that we made it our own.  Today, let's learn why God sees as he sees, and also build bonds with other people rather than walls between us.