There is an old story about a man who was a confessed smuggler. Everyone knew that he was a smuggler and he made no effort to hide the fact. Every day this man would cross the border with his donkey loaded with hay. Every day the border guards were sure he was smuggling and they would search him carefully. They would search the donkey carefully. They would even search through the hay. But every day the results were the same. They found nothing.

This went on for years, and the man became quite wealthy. In fact, he did so well that he decided to retire. On the day of his retirement, he made one last trip across the border with his donkey loaded with hay. After the guards had searched him and again found nothing, he invited them to a party that evening to celebrate his retirement.

The whole village came out for this party and there was singing and dancing and laughter and food. During the celebration the border guards came up to the man and asked him the question that had been haunting them all these years. “We know that you have been smuggling, but we could never find anything. What have you been smuggling across our border?” The man smiled and said simply, “Donkeys!”

How we experience the world depends in large part on the perspective from which we view the world. The filters we use to make sense of our lives affect the kind of sense we make. The border guards couldn’t see that the man was smuggling donkeys because they were operating out of a different understanding of what could be smuggled. So it is with us as we try to discover what is true. If we use the sensibility of the modern media as our guide, we will come away with one understanding of truth. If we listen to the voice of the various hate groups which are flourishing in our culture, we will have a very different sense of what is true. Perspective changes everything.

Once upon a time there was a boy who liked to play in the woods and imagine that he was in some magical land far away. One day he was playing by a stream when a stick floated by. He began to follow the stick and imagine that it was some mighty ship sailing the seas. As little boys will, he became so involved with the stick that he really wasn’t paying much attention to where he was going. Eventually the stream led him under an old country bridge and when he crossed into the shadow of the bridge the change of light startled him back to reality. As his eyes adjusted to the shadows he became aware of two lights shining out of the darkness under the bridge. He quickly realized that they were eyes, and that the eyes belonged to a troll. This could have been a frightening encounter, except that this particular troll was the happiest creature the boy had ever seen. He asked the troll what it was that made him so happy, and the troll replied by sharing a secret with the boy. He gave him a magical red Folgers coffee can and told him that if he filled the can with all the good things he could find in the world, then he would be as happy as the troll.

Well, the boy took the can and set about doing just that. As he grew up he tried to fill it with good things. In school he got good grades and was in all the important clubs and groups. He put evidence of those things in the can. He married a beautiful woman and had two beautiful children. He put their pictures in the can. He became more and more successful in business and made more and more money. He put newspaper clippings, bank statements and stock portfolios in the can. But try as he might, the can never seemed to quite fill up and so he was never quite as happy as he thought he should be. Finally, when he was a very old man, he was riding in his limousine, having just sealed the deal on the largest multi-national merger in the history of business. He placed the contract in the can and again it was not quite full. He became so angry and so frustrated and so cheated that he rolled down the window and threw the can out of the car.

As luck would have it, it landed in the yard of a small house where a young girl was playing. She picked up the worn and battered can and began to look at it. Because she did not know that it was magical and did not know that its magic worked by filling it with life’s treasures, she noticed something which the man had failed to notice all his life. The can had no bottom! Had he noticed this he also would have noticed that he had gone through his whole life leaving a trail of evidence of all his accomplishments and achievements. But he had not noticed, and now it was too late. The girl, on the other hand, knew nothing about any of this, so she picked it up and looked through the can and saw the trees. Then she pointed the can to the sky and she saw the clouds. She saw flowers and grass through the can and she saw her friends in the yard across the street. She was so excited that she ran in the house to show her mother the magical can she had found -- it was filled with the whole world.

How we look at the world can make all the difference in what we see. And we often need help in breaking free from our own narrow perspectives. In big ways and in small ways, we are called to allow God’s Spirit to open our eyes to what is important and true in the world and in our lives. Because it doesn’t do any good to be made a little lower than God and crowned with glory and honor if we never recognize the truth of who we are. May God grant us vision and perception, the gift of seeing clearly and truly, so that we might begin to live life in the fullness that God intends.