Does My Face Look Old?

I was visiting family when my niece’s daughter, who is only 4, arrived. She came stood at the entrance to the room where I was seated and, well, stared at me.  Her mother explained, “On the way here Charlotte wanted to know how old you and Jill (my wife) are. I explained that you were as old as my parents. But she persisted, ‘No, Mommy, are they old? Like, do they have old hands and faces, like all wrinkly and stuff.”  By this time the pretty little girl had worked her way to within a few feet of my chair. So, through our laughter, I asked her, “Well, what do you think?”,  as I gave her a close-up of my face and hands? She, already knowing social graces, declined to answer, and went right into Mommy’s waiting arms for refuge from the bearded man.

So, now I will never know if in Charlotte’s definition of “old face” my face is an old one.  I wondered why she asked the question, and what I come up with is this:  when we are meeting someone we don’t know or cannot remember, we ask anyone who might know, “What does she look like?”  We remember people by their faces. The face is more than a collection of body parts; it is our “identity.” How often, when we meet someone we know, do we say “What’s wrong?” just from the look on their face. Or we say, “You look so happy!”, or words to that effect. Strangers identify us from our faces; friends and family know so much about our hearts from our faces.

All of which makes me wonder why God couldn’t let people see his “face” and live. Exodus 33:20 says that you cannot see the face of God and live.  Which makes the “face” of God so much more mysterious.  But then Jesus happened.  So now we are promised, in I Corinthians 13:12, that we will see the face of God and live. We can think a long time about how Jesus changed the dynamic, but the good news is, we will see God’s face and live. So now we can ask, what do you think God’s face looks like? Is it an “old face”? Is it a face that when we see it we will say, “What’s wrong?” Or, will it have such a look that we will know God is very happy to see us? 

I want to know the face of God. I wonder what it will look like.  But I know that as God invites me to look more closely God’s eyes will say “I love you.”  I hope that until that day children, like Charlotte, will look into my eyes and see the same message.  Maybe that is a face we all could put on. Even those of us with “old faces”.