What I Didn't Get to Say on Sunday (04/19/2026): Alive to See (PT. 1)

Want to go deeper? This blog expands on the message preached on April 19 at GracePointe. Watch the full message at https://gpnaz.church/media.

"He told them, 'The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven.'"
Mark 4:11–12 (NIV)

I opened this Sunday's message with something I've never told a congregation before.
I am colorblind.

Not completely. I have what's called red-weak colorblindness. Most colors I process just fine. But certain shades; light pink, dark red; my brain literally cannot distinguish them correctly. I'm not guessing wrong. I'm seeing wrong. There is a difference, and that difference matters more than I realized until I was eighteen years old standing in front of a mirror nodding at what I was absolutely certain was a white t-shirt.

It was pink.

Not a subtle pink. A pink.

I walked through an entire day; an entire workday at a summer camp full of kids who could not stop laughing; completely convinced I was wearing something I was not. The camp director told me I was brave for expressing myself. My buddy on his way to the gym barely looked up before he said it. I looked down and still couldn't tell.
I had to take someone else's word for it.

Here is what stayed with me long after that day was over: I was not careless. I was not distracted. I was not refusing to look. I looked directly at that shirt in the mirror that morning and my brain processed the information it received and returned a confident answer.

The answer was wrong.

And I had no idea.

I opened with that story on Sunday because of a tension I found in two passages of Scripture sitting side by side in my preparation this week.

In Mark 4:11–12, Jesus says something that is deeply unsettling if you sit with it long enough. He tells His disciples that the secret of the Kingdom has been given to them; but to those on the outside, everything comes in parables, so that they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, ever hearing but never understanding.
Ever seeing. But never perceiving.

That is not a description of people who aren't looking. That is a description of people who are looking directly at something; and still cannot see it correctly.

Then you get to Luke 24, and something extraordinary happens. Two disciples; people who were on the inside, people who had walked with Jesus, eaten with Jesus, watched Him heal the sick and raise the dead; are walking away from Jerusalem. And the Risen Christ falls into step right beside them.

And they do not recognize Him.

In that moment, the insiders are acting like outsiders. They have the facts. They have the history. They have three years of front-row access to the Son of God. And they look directly at Him and see a stranger.

Ever seeing. Never perceiving.

But here is where Luke 24 does something Mark 4 leaves open. Luke shows us the reversal. The moment the condition is corrected. The moment someone who was seeing wrong — genuinely, completely, confidently wrong; has their eyes opened and sees clearly for the first time.

It doesn't happen because they tried harder. It doesn't happen because they gathered more information or reviewed what they already knew. It happens at a table. Over broken bread. In the most ordinary moment of the evening. And something in their chest said; I know those hands.

Their eyes were opened.

This is what I could not stop thinking about all week.

Colorblindness is not a focus problem. You cannot fix it by paying closer attention. You cannot will your way into seeing colors your eyes were not designed to process. The correction has to come from outside of you. Someone hands you the right lenses, or someone tells you what they see, and you have to decide whether you are willing to trust them.

I had to take my buddy's word for it that the shirt was pink. I could not get there on my own.
The disciples had to take Jesus at His word that the suffering was not the end of the story; that everything they had watched fall apart was actually the thing being built. They could not get there on their own either. Their grief had narrowed what they were able to see. Their shattered expectations had reorganized their perception in ways they were not even aware of.
That is not a character flaw. That is a human condition.

And the resurrection of Jesus is, among everything else that it is, the moment God reaches into that human condition and opens eyes that could not open themselves.

The question I want to leave you with this week is not whether you believe that happened two thousand years ago on a road outside Jerusalem.

The question is whether you are willing to let it happen to you right now.
Because some of us have been seeing wrong for a long time. Confident. Certain. Looking directly at our lives and our circumstances and our relationships and our faith — and processing it all through a lens that grief or disappointment or unmet expectation quietly installed without us noticing.

And Jesus has been walking right beside us the whole time.

You don't need a new life. You need new eyes to see the life God is already in.

The lenses are available. But like my buddy at the gym, somebody has to be willing to say what they see. And you have to be willing to take their word for it.