His Face

As I sat in church on Sunday an image was shown on the big screen. I was told that if I would look closely I would see the face of Jesus!
Yes, with the help of a little imagination, you could see an image that could be interrupted to look similar to the image on a painting hanging in the foyer of the church. That image at the back of the church is also someone’s idea of how they think Jesus looked.
You must remember; there were no photographs of Him. No portraits of Him while He was alive. Just many hundreds of artist’s interpretations of how they thought He “may have” looked. And, all were painted hundreds of years after His death! No one really knows what He really looked like!
My interpretation of Him today, would find Him with well groomed beard and hair and probably wearing jeans and a sport shirt. If He was to return to our world of today, tell me why we should expect Him to look like He did two-thousand years ago? But, remember, that’s just my interpretation! I just can’t see Him today like the wispy image that some see in a photo!
Now, let’s take another step. I’ve often heard people of different faiths tell me, that when they die, they will set at the right hand of God and “GET TO SEE HIS FACE!”
Why do they have to wait to die to see His face? I see God’s face every day! In fact, I saw it less than an hour before I started writing this! I believe that My God is the God of all things. Some disagree with me; they think God is some bearded old man floating somewhere
in the clouds. A God to be called on only when needed and then filed safely away until needed the next time! Also that one needs special words and places to make that call.
For most of my life I’ve had special things happen to me. Things I knew were put there just for me! I always believed my God put them there to let me know that He was always with me! I could walk past thousands of flowers and then one bloom would stop me in my tracks! I could be looking at the sky and suddenly I could see images in the clouds that had meaning for me! I could be listening to music and suddenly hear sounds that were so great that they would almost bring me to tears!
Some mornings I would look out of my front window and see a family of Blue Jays. Their actions would always put a smile on my face, and one of the birds would come so close to my window that we could look eye to eye! Other mornings, two young squirrels would perform for me, they would run up and down a small tree, they would jump and chase each other but best of all they made me smile!
For all those years I have given thanks for all of those special things that have found their way into my life. But, it was not until that photo was put on the large screen that it hit me!
As I told you before; I believe my God is the God of all things. It was then that I realized that all of the special things I felt were being done for me, was my God showing me some of His many faces!
I had to see something that I really did not believe in to make me realize something that I could truly believe! My God had been showing me his face all this time and I had not recognized Him!!!
That made me wonder: how many others had lived their entire lives walking past His face and never recognized Him? Were they so sure that He looked like that old bearded man in those paintings that they didn’t bother to look elsewhere?
Today I recognized Him! I saw the most beautiful red rose I had ever seen! I stopped and looked closely and studied that rose. I felt a warm smile in my heart! I had seen His face!
How can we expect to find Him until we learn to look for Him?