To See Your Face

I can’t see you. 

All I can see is the words. The happy, fun, serious, sad, excited, passionate words. The long, complicated, beautiful sentences. The quick, fun, lifey updates. The all-caps, no-punctuation reactions to your favorite books and the serious (sometimes sad) requests for prayer.

I can see all those words, but I can’t see your face.

Maybe I could at one point. Maybe we prayed together before the most important test we’d ever taken. Maybe we sat together in a crowded auditorium or glanced at each other in nervous excitement as we waited for our names to be called. Maybe we stayed up way too late singing or dancing or talking or watching movies.

Maybe we’ve never really met. Maybe you’re a friend I met on the internet somewhere, and I know you like to write or read or you love God (or even the Bible Bee); but I have no idea of the fullness of the life you lead. I don’t know what you like to talk about or where you go with your family on Saturday afternoons or what kind of moments make you smile.

Words are such wonderful things, really; we can put our thoughts into a machine and let them travel the miles in an instant and arrive unscathed. We are blessed with the existence of emails and social media and texting and chat rooms.

But words are such disembodied things. We can never really look at the person behind the screen. With time, I might forget your face. I might forget who you really are, forget that you’re more than you or I can ever express in a few hundred characters and words.

I’ll text or email or Tweet. I’ll do video calls. I’ll write long paragraphs (and short ones) and post them on this blog. I’ll be careful with my words, and try to express myself as best I can.
But most of all I look forward to the day when we’ll be together with no more thought of parting. We who have been saved by the grace of God will worship Him forever… and then, only then, the fellowship of saints will be complete. And all of the time we spent together here on earth, and all the time we spent apart too, it will all be to the glory of the one who showed us what true love means. The one who is glorified by the Christian fellowship He bought with His blood.

And on that day we will see His face. He, who said to Moses, “You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!” Oh, the glorious day when it will not mean death to look upon the Light of life! “We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, for we will see Him as He is.” The one face that is our truest delight will be plain to our new-made eyes.

“And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies Himself, just as He is pure.” While we wait, we work. We seek to ever more delight ourselves in our God  who gave His life to save us. We look forward always in hope.

~~~

Though you should go where I no longer see,
I won’t forget your name; and if I die
Just know I’ve gone ahead and we will meet
Where finally there will be no more goodbyes.
~ (Excerpt from NaPoWriMo Week Three)

//Scripture quoted or referenced ~ Exodus 33:20; 1 John 3:2-3