Barcelona and melting clocks.

Today, I am in Spain. It is incredible. I live in a flat above a fruit stand. On my block there is a little café. A simple café con leche (espresso shot with a very small amount of milk) is better than any coffee I’ve ever tasted before.

So far Jordan and I have explored by foot, bike, and metro, much of the city—the intense calluses can testify to that. I will be living here for eight weeks and I couldn’t be more excited. Barcelona (the c is pronounced as a ‘th’ here) can only be described as a melting pot of culture. I must hear five languages a day, English often being the rarest one. And if I do hear English spoken it is more often than not with a British accent. All the signs here are in Catalan but it is rare for people to speak it; everybody speaks Spanish. I really can’t describe how beautiful it is here. The architecture ranges from old Roman aqueducts, to crazy contemporary glass skyscrapers. Every street corner has a museum of some sort and I hope to explore most of them. What’s more, the beach, la Playa Barceloneta, is only about a five minute metro ride from my apartment.

I’m not here on vacation though; class is a four hour part of my day. Still, I’m quite excited. My Spanish language class is solely in Spanish, which is a wonderfully challenging thing, and my other class is a Spanish art and heritage class taught by a woman with a fantastic Australian accent. Today was actually the first day of class. In Spanish art and heritage the teacher lined out all that we would be learning throughout the short summer semester. One of our sections will be on Salvador Dali. The teacher said in a comment concerning his work that I found very interesting. He once painted his “muse” using only circles in order to represent the idea that we are all made out of atoms and molecules. What we see certainly isn’t electrons flying around, we see the human form. But Dali explored what it might be like to see things differently in order that we might think about things with a deeper understanding.

What if someone was able to paint us in such a way? I don’t mean paint us as circles, but paint us in truth. What if someone was able to paint the people we see every day in a way that exceeds our natural ability to see? What our eyes are capable of understanding is often drastically different from truth. What if when we saw someone whose life had been changed by the love and sacrifice of Christ, we saw not their humanly figure, but rather we saw the glorious righteousness of Jesus that that person had been clothed with? What if as we walked around we didn’t see flesh mistreated, but we saw the image of God being abused?

What if today when I looked into the mirror I didn’t see a twenty year old sun-burnt face with a few pimples and in need of a shave? What if I looked into the mirror and saw a struggling sinner who has been made holy by the holiness of Him who calls me His precious and loved son? It would change the way I live.