Your Face

We often sing about seeking God's face. I was thinking about this aspect of our relationship to God recently when I tried to imagine what His face is like. In my mind's eye I saw the light of His face. It was shimmering with wavelengths of light substance imperceptible to the physical human eye. His face turned toward me and I am unable to describe what my imagination saw.
One time while I was away from home I tried to remember the faces of my family. The outcome was what one might expect. I remembered most easily those which I had known the longest. I need to seek God's face more if I want to remember Him in times of difficulty... times when I feel He is distant.
I recently had a career change. My former employment was composed of a lot of phone work, with minimal face to face interaction. In contrast, my new situation requires a relatively large amount of interpersonal communication. I observe facial expressions and I realize that my own face is likewise registering expression. But Is it expressing what I want it to express?! Or has my former occupation compromised my facial communication?
Our spiritual growth is dependant on fellowship. Jesus said, "whatever you do for the least of these... you have done it unto me,"Mt 25. We need interaction with people in order to develop our ability to relate to God. That relationship, which is opened only by our faith in Jesus' sacrifice, is kept clear by regularly seeing the faces of fellow believers. Maybe its just the nod of a head as I relate a prayer request, or the observation of a tear at the description of a trial or testing. Maybe its a quizzically raised eyebrow that tells me that I need to come back to earth.
Whatever the facial expressions may be, they are each an indicator of my relationship with God. I need to praise Him for the expression of confident resolve that I've observed when before there was doubt. I need to ask forgiveness because of the hurt expression that I caused on the face of a fellow pilgrim. I must pray for that one whose sorrowful expression I only observed from a distance. I must dig into God's Word for correction or confirmation when a quizzically raised eyebrow tells me I'm out in left field.
Someday I will see God face to face... I wonder whether my face will register shock, shame, awe (of course), regret, or the greatest serenity and fulfillment imaginable.

Faith is?

"... And without faith it is impossible to please God" What does that look like? Does it mean jumping when we don’t know what is there to catch us... how we will pay the bills, what we will do for employment? Or does faith mean living life in the turmoil of doubt and difficulty that we struggle with here and now, but with the knowledge that God has a purpose in it? Or is faith something that is, as of yet, foreign? Just fooling ourselves... being the “say so” believer... having prayed a prayer but without the sincerity necessary to attain to true faith? ... It’s good to air out the mind... shake it like a dirty rug. Dirt stings your face as the fringe snaps. Resolution is what is needed, resolution that comes from the sources of wisdom over which God alone presides. Reading His Word we're distracted by the desire to come up with answers. The Answer whispers “come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden,” but eyes are closed. Return to the nightmare of fear. It's more comfortable here. Stir the mind lest it find rest. Sleep is foreign, and exhaustion, reality. The ultra long distance runner, days on his feet, falls asleep mid stride. He awakens seconds later, still running, three hundred miles done, fifty to go. Aiming at a destination that is really no destination at all, a mere finish line, he acheives only a title. He is the Great Struggler. There’s a comfort in the title, a perverse pride in martyrdom. God raise us up instead as examples of grace, testifying of Your love in spite of doubt, in spite of troubles. Your glory shines all the brighter when we are weak for then we rise solely in Your strength. Today we must satisfy ourselves with this hope. Focus on that day when a reward will be given, when hands which poin to the Savior from Nazareth will grasp His hand that wrought our salvation.

Reflections on Jeremiah 29:11

• God boldly declares His knowledge of what is hidden to us... the future.





• God is utterly and magnificently sovereign over our experience. He is outside the realm of cause and effect, our tedious one dimensional timeline. His perspective upon the universe is from outside... not just spatially but also chronologically. He knows the end already... not because He can see ahead but because He can see from above and from below, from behind and from other dimensions of which we cannot conceive. Isaiah succinctly describes God's perspective in this way: "My ways are higher than your ways."






• God is not apologetic about His works. He made all that is and He said it was good... then we came along. What He made is still good but it is tainted in every place by the effects of that three letter word that is not "P.C."






• His plans are not thwarted by our sin. God actually planned for that eventuality. Repeated examples in the Scriptures and in our own experience give credence to this idea. A few Biblical examples that come to mind are: Adam and Eve, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph and his brothers, David, Solomon, Jonah, Judas Iscariot, Peter, and Paul. Our own lives are innumerable testimonies to God's triumphant sovereignty. When one comes face to face with this reality it ought to cause a staggering back, a sudden gasp of realization.






• This God, who created all we see and presides over all that is, is the one who makes our future secure. Paul puts it this way: "He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?"






• The hope that God speaks of, He makes sure in Christ Jesus. Any hope that we have is in Him or it is no hope at all. To say it in another way: God, who breathed Jer. 29:11 also breathed John 14:6 and Acts 4:12.

Our first run together last spring... Morna and I are looking forward to running again this season. We won't crowd anyone at the front of the pack. Last year we enjoyed huffing and puffing right in the middle of the 5k crowd. Maybe this year we'll edge into the 8.30 pace... and try some other distances too.