I grew up hearing a verse from scripture:
“Now we see through a glass dimly, but then face to face.”
For most of my life, “face to face” felt like something reserved for later—something distant, maybe even only available in the afterlife. In the meantime, I assumed I was stuck with partial vision. Limited understanding. A kind of spiritual fog.
If I’m honest, I internalized something else too:
That God was… distant.
That clarity was conditional.
That if I could just be good enough, obedient enough, faithful enough—then maybe I’d finally see clearly.
It felt a little like a carrot being dangled just out of reach.
The Easter message at my church was about the story of Peter.
Peter has always fascinated me because he leads with his heart before his head. He’s impulsive. Relational. Willing. And that combination gets him into situations most of us would rather avoid.
One of those stories continues to surface in my work with people.
The disciples are in a boat, caught in a storm, afraid they’re about to be swallowed by the sea. And then, out in the chaos,Peter sees Jesus walking toward them on the water.
They speak.
And then Jesus does something strange.
He invites Peter out of the boat.
A quick confession, especially if we don’t know each other well: I don’t read the miraculous stories in scripture as literal events. But I do believe they tell the truth, deep truth about how God relates to us, and how we move through our own lives.
So back to Peter.
He’s standing in a boat that feels, at least relatively, safe. And yet everything about the situation says the boat itself might not hold. The storm is real. The danger is real.
And still when Jesus invites him; Peter steps out.
Not because it makes sense.
Not because he understands how.
Not because he suddenly has clarity.
He steps out into something he cannot explain.
And for a moment, he walks.
But the story tells us that when his attention shifts; when he turns inward, when fear takes over, when he tries to make sense of what’s happening, he begins to sink.
I think we misunderstand this story if we reduce it to belief or doubt.
This is a story about attention.
Peter was never safer because of the boat. The boat was just known. Familiar. Contained. Predictable.
But what is known is not always what is safe.
And what is unknown is not always what is dangerous.
Peter’s stability didn’t come from controlling his environment. It came from where he placed his attention.
When his awareness was aligned with something beyond his own ego, his own fear, his own need to understand, he could do what he previously thought was impossible.
Invitations require glimpses
In my experience, God doesn’t typically invite us into something we have zero capacity for.
But that doesn’t mean we feel ready.
It means we’ve had glimpses.
Small moments. Subtle experiences. Times in our lives where something opened, shifted, carried us, held us, often in ways we couldn’t fully name at the time.
Trust isn’t built from certainty.
It’s built from remembering.
Not just that we’ve survived but that we’ve been shaped. That something met us in those moments.
These glimpses become a kind of inner knowing - not logical, not provable - but real.
Because the truth is, we only ever have access to the present moment. The future will always be, at best, dimly seen.
So spiritual growth isn’t about figuring out the future.
It’s about becoming present enough to notice the invitations that are already here.
Paying attention
This is where spiritual practice matters.
Not as a way to perfect ourselves but as a way to pay attention.
Drawing from the Enneagram, teacher Chris Heuertz names three core practices tied to our centers of intelligence: silence, stillness, and solitude.
Each of these creates space for us to notice what we would otherwise miss.
For the head types, who live in constant mental activity ideas, plans, fears, analysis—
the practice is silence.
Not the absence of sound, but the softening of internal noise.
Sometimes this looks like focusing on a single thing (a poem, a piece of music, a breath) long enough for everything else to quiet.
For the body types, who move through instinct, reaction, and momentum—
the practice is stillness.
A literal stopping. A refusal to keep moving.
Learning to be instead of constantly doing.
For the heart types, who are deeply attuned to others… needs, expectations, approval
the practice is solitude.
Stepping away from external energy long enough to hear their own voice again.
Often through expression (art, writing, movement), something that brings the self back into view.
These practices don’t give us answers.
They give us awareness.
And in that awareness we begin to notice the glimpses.
What we want, why we want it, and letting go of how
Recently, I’ve been loosely exploring ideas from the “manifestation” world—mostly out of curiosity.
And while I know that language can feel a little out there for some people, I’ve been struck by how similar it feels to the prayer tradition I grew up in.
A friend shared something with me that I haven’t been able to shake:
Our prayer lives can be centered on two things:
What we want and why we want it.
That’s it.
Clarity of desire.
Honesty of intention.
But there’s a third piece that we’re invited to release:
The how.
The how doesn’t belong to us.
Because when we try to control the how, we almost always default to the limits of our own thinking: our own history, our own fear, our own ego.
We recreate what we already know.
Letting go of the how is deeply counterintuitive.
But it’s also the doorway to something beyond us.
Seeing dimly
Maybe we were never meant to see everything clearly.
Maybe “through a glass dimly” isn’t a problem to solve but a reality to live within.
Because clarity isn’t what makes transformation possible.
Attention is.
Presence is.
Trust, formed through glimpses, is.
Faith isn’t about having a perfect vision of what’s ahead.
It’s about trusting the invitation enough to step out of the boat.
Not because you understand it.
Not because it feels safe.
But because something in you recognizes it.
Even dimly.