My husband and I were driving back from meeting his parents, which is about an hour drive, and we were talking about our ministry to seniors last night. Earlier in the day, we had finished our Southern Gospel services to three senior facilities and we were hashing over the whole experience. We talked about the various seniors, many of whom have been in the senior facilities that we serve for the entire six years that we’ve been going there.

As we talked, I told my husband how I had noticed that sometimes, when I think that there is no connection there, I will bend down and peer directly into their eyes and I will feel as if suddenly their hearts are right there inside their glistening pupils.

For instance, one woman wore a lovely straw hat. She wore it low over her eyes and I came by and took her hand and asked her how she was, but I couldn’t see her eyes. I could’ve just assumed she was fine. She had a nice smile on her face from the nose downward, but I’ve learned to ask the question better sometimes and look deeper for the real answer. So, I bent down, and peered up under the brim of her hat, only to find deep sadness there inside her eyes and even tears. I prayed on two separate occasions with her simply because of those eyes.

There is another little lady who is as sweet as can be, but her body is betraying her. Both hands are starting to deform and so they have put splints on both of them. Her little face hangs, ravaged with age, and her eyelids are bright red and droop about an inch below her sockets. All of this causes a person to be distracted by her maladies. I’ve learned that by focusing on the pupils of her eyes, I can see right past the maladies and observe the sweet heart behind all that.

One of our ladies always sits on the front row. In fact, it’s her spot and she doesn’t mind letting folks know about that. She only has one eye and the one that is missing is simply permanently closed. It’s very distracting and it inhibits my ability to connect with her sometimes because my attention is almost always drawn to the missing eye, but I steel my eyes to look at the other eye and that is where all the life resides. Inside that eye, the emotions, love, gratefulness, and faith all peer right back at me.

I’ve always heard the saying, “The eyes are the windows to the soul.” I thought it was biblical, but apparently, it is an old English proverb. I have always believed it to be true, but lately, in doing this ministry, I have learned a little something about bypassing the defenses through the eyes. People tend to put up their guard a lot and they have a lot of ways of doing that, but the eyes are the things that give them up and when we focus our attention on a person’s eyes, we are really plunging the depths and digging beneath the surface of the person.

I prefer getting to the core of a person. Some people don’t want me digging, and I respect that. I don’t want to go where I am not allowed. I’ve met very few people who didn’t want me digging. Still, I think peeling back someone’s layers shows that you genuinely care about the person. It shows that care enough about the person to get to their insides.

So, I am sharing my little secret with you today. It’s an age-old secret and certainly not original. People have known about it for years, but maybe in a world where the Internet and TV provide us with instant gratification, we have forgotten the wisdom behind that old English proverb. It’s right there in the eyes. It’s not the nose, lips, cheeks, or even the smile. It’s in the eyes. If you look past everything else, you will find that the eyes tell everything you need to know.