One of the great miracles of life is that God pays attention to us. This is partly why the writers of Scripture speak so often of God's face. This is the hope of the great priestly blessing that God himself taught the people of Israel:
The LORD bless you and keep you;
the LORD make his face to shine upon you
and be gracious to you
the LORD turn his face toward you
and give you peace.
To turn your face toward someone is to give that person your whole-hearted, undivided attention. It is not the casual listening of a preoccupied mind. It is a statement: "I have nothing else to do, nowhere I'd rather be, I'm fully devoted to being with you." This is the kind of attention God lavishes on us.
It gets better. This blessing says God will not only turn his face toward us, he will make it "shine" on us. The shining face is an image of delight. It is the face of a proud parent beaming while a child plays in her first piano recital. It is the radiant face of a bride as she walks the aisle to her groom. We can turn our face toward (pay attention to) anyone, with little effort. But our faces shine and beam and grow radiant only in the presence of those we love most deeply. And this, says the prayer, is how God loves us.
John Ortberg. (1998). Love Beyond Reason. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. p 31.
There's only one problem. We don't really believe that it's true. For most of us, the idea that God has nothing better to do than to hang with us, or that his face lights with joy when he turns toward us, is completely far-fetched.
Why is that? I invite you to ponder that thought in your own devotions or to leave a comment with your thoughts below. But most of all, I invite you to stay tuned while we explore this question together.
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