With Christ in our Eyes

Summary

One day many years ago in Columbus, Ohio, I was down on my hands and knees in the entryway of our church building, installing ceramic tiles. I was dressed in old, tattered clothes. My hands and blue jeans were smeared with grey mortar. Around mid‐morning, Moises walked into the building. Moises was a Colombian man in his early 60s who had come to Ohio from Bogotá to do a master’s degree in Yiddish at Ohio State University. Through a network of relationships, Moises and his wife had found their way to our congregation. They now attended worship regularly and were friends with many of us. In fact, Moises’ wife, Alicia, sometimes took care of our sons, Peter and Nicholas. We had been in their home often, and they in ours. We knew each other well.

But when Moises walked into the church building that morning and saw me on my hands and knees, engaged in the messy job of laying ceramic tiles, astonishment crossed his face. “Dan,” he exclaimed, “what are you doing?”

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