When we are born do we leave our place with God? Do we spend the rest of our lives seeking his face, seeking a place back within him?

For you created my inmost being;

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.  Psalm 139:13

We Forget the Face of God

Some way back in the recesses of my memory is a story which has stayed with me. It is the story of a child heard whispering to his new baby sister as she lay in her cuddle seat on the living room floor, whispering when he thought no one could hear:

 “Quick!! Tell me what the face of God looks like, I am starting to forget!”

This seems so wonderful and yet so sad. Did we really leave the comfort of God to travel into our earthly existence to wait out our time here until we can see him again? We are knit together in our mother’s womb by God, he knows us so well that he can count the hairs on our heads, we are all precious to him, we are all the apple of his eye and held in the palm of his hand. Mary looked at her beloved baby and did she know she looked upon the face of God? When we look upon our babies do we look upon a face fresh from God? No wonder our wee ones scream in agony at 2am…this is not Kansas anymore, Dorothy!

We are all Seeking Meaning

We spend the rest of our lives seeking our place back with God. Some people do not even know what they are seeking. There is an entire market for social psychology, self help, self awareness, and a personal quest for meaning which we attribute to the human condition. There are  numerous workshops and clinics, retreats and conferences which explore personal potential. It is characteristic of human nature to be dissatisfied and driven and many organizations and individuals capitalize on this. I know of a Circus retreat in California where, for a great outlay of cash, participants can learn to test their personal boundaries and establish meaning in their lives through learning the trapeze! If you would like you can learn to walk on live coals or live in silence as you wait for inspiration. Some people search their whole lives for inner purpose, others grow disillusioned and quit, and still others settle for a substitute.

Adolescence, the Beginning of the Quest

But is it a coincidence that this quest comes into fruition in adolescence. Is this the point at which we no longer remember the face of God? Up until this point children are content within their existence. They cry when they are sad and seek comfort,  and they laugh when they are happy and want to share what makes them so. The children of Christian parents know the stories of the bible and they accept the faith of their parents. But adolescence brings a time of rejection. In our teens we decide what /who we are NOT, and in our later teens, and early twenties we decide what/who we ARE. The struggle to establish an identity can mean forceful rebellion, experimentation, mistakes and failures, as well as fun, adventure and discovery! This is the time when we get our first taste of freedom: we can stay home alone, we can take a bus and go somewhere. Our parents are not there to protect us and so we find out what/ who we are through the choices we make, good and bad.  In later years we decide who we want to be. This can be as painful a process as the teens years since we now face with regret our foolish adolescent decisions, and recognize we alone are responsible for ourselves! Ouch! This is the time of self evaluation and creation, a time of finding meaning, a time for seeking God.

Young Adulthood

Our next phase of life is young adulthood, we move into marriage, careers and young  families. We get very busy with our lives. We seek a life partner, an adventure in itself both painful and rewarding. We seek a partner whom we can admire, one who completes and fulfills us. We establish a career, and find meaning i work, but if this does not fulfil us we begin to look outside our frame of reference. I coud not find any statistics on the age of people who read self help books or as professionals call them “psychology of adjustment” books but as a Public Library reference librarian, I can subjectively say that 20 to 60 is a safe age range. Though many of the books are seen to be helpful or inspiring, most are written to sell as much as to help. Most of the readers of self help books are regulars, they never find the one book that answers their need and in a sense they are addicted to the social psychology genre in an endless quest for meaning.

The Blessing of Parenthood

Parenthood is the closest we come to the face of God as we are blessed with the young faces of our children. Again I wonder, as Mary held the infant Jesus and gazed mesmerized into his face as all us mothers do, did she know she was gazing into the face of God, aren’t all mothers gazing at the face of Jesus? My husband and I often wondered what we had to look at before our children were born! I was never so struck by the wonder of creation as when I had a first row seat in the miracle of pregnancy and birth. Our families grow and change, and we spend years enjoying their growth and sharing in the wonder of their discovery of this beautiful world and also agonizing over their pain and struggles and wishing we could do this for them! Then they move through their own adolescence and questions. As they explore their faith and move from sharing their parent’s faith to cherishing their own,  we answer their questions with our best effort and watch their struggles. And we pray, and our prayer brings us closer to God.

The Final Phase

Our children leave, and start their own lives, and we move into the phase of senior adulthood. By this time most people have either found what they are looking for, they have found a close approximation, or they have given up. There are the smiling, sweet, adorable, happy seniors in our lives, the moderately happy though negative seniors, and the downright grumpy ones, depending upon how satisfied they are with life. I take joy in the seniors I know and their wisdom and I am impressed with how much of their time they give to others. Paul told us to serve one another in love, (Galatians 5:13) and to serve as if we were serving God (Ephesians 6:7) and I have encountered many such seniors! They serve as if God were in the faces of those they care for! The meaning in theirs lives is in the faces of those they serve in God’s name.

The Prize; The Face of God

Then finally we reach the autumn of our time here, we struggle with pain and illness and loss of companions. Our faith grows richer and deeper, and we wait. Have you ever met the elderly who have a quiet, calm, gentle demeanor and a deep, abiding faith? They can be found in the back row of the church where they sit while others stand, they are given rides to church by those other, serving seniors, and though their faces have pain, they are beautiful. They know they are living out their lives in the expectation of once again seeing the face of God. Their story has come full circle. It is our hope always to see the face of our God and Saviour in the fullness of time. It is the greatest blessing of the Christian life.