Seeking the Face of God

This are Augustine’s closing remarks on Psalm 38:

“Depart not from me. Make haste to help me, Lord of my salvation” (ver. 22). This is that very “salvation,” Brethren, concerning which, as the Apostle Peter saith, “Prophets have enquired diligently,” and though they have enquired diligently, yet have not found it. But they searched into it, and foretold of it; while we have come and have found what they sought for. And see, we ourselves too have not as yet received it; and after us shall others also be born, and shall find, what they also shall not receive, and shall pass away, that we may, all of us together, receive the “penny of salvation in the end of the day,” with the Prophets, the Patriarchs, and the Apostles. 

For you know that the hired servants, or labourers, were taken into the vineyard at different times; yet did they all receive their wages on an equal footing. Apostles, then, and Prophets, and Martyrs, and ourselves also, and those who will follow us to the end of the world, it is in the End itself that we are to receive everlasting salvation; that beholding the face of God, and contemplating His Glory, we may praise Him forever, free from imperfection, free from any punishment of iniquity, free from every perversion of sin: praising Him; and no longer longing after Him, but now clinging to Him for whom we used to long to the very end, and in whom we did rejoice, in hope. For we shall be in that City, where God is our Bliss, God is our Light, God is our Bread, God is our Life; whatever good thing of ours there is, at being absent from which we now grieve, we shall find in Him. 

In Him will be that “rest,” which when we “call to remembrance” now, we cannot choose but grieve. For that is the “Sabbath” which we “call to remembrance;” in the recollection of which, so great things have been said already; and so great things ought to be said by us also, and ought never to cease being said by us, not with our lips indeed, but in our heart: for therefore do our lips cease to speak, that we may cry out with our hearts." (Italics mine).

I am reminded of Psalm 27:8, “When You said, Seek My face, my heart said to You, Your face, O Yahweh, I shall seek.”

Also of Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:6, “For God, who said, Light shall shine out of darkness, is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”

Ought we not to pray every morning, “O Father, teach me to seek Your face”? And should we not seek His face in our Lord Jesus Christ? Is it not in Christ that we see the glory of God unveiled?

  

When Jesus says, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God”, do we realize that God is speaking? Do we see that our hearts are not only cleansed by Christ, but that when we see Christ that we see God? Christ cleanses our hearts so that we might see Him, and in seeing Him we see the Father (John 14:9).

I think of my friend and brother, George Will, who I first met in 1966 and who now is, I think, “with the Lord” for I have not heard from him for about three years and his phone is not in service – when I first met George, Hebrews 12:2 was constantly on his lips, “Looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith…”; as I spoke to him at varying intervals throughout the years “Looking unto Jesus” continued to be on his lips and in his heart – it was George’s North Star, the center of his life. Ought not “Looking unto Jesus” to be on our lips and in our hearts continually?

Ought we not to be seeking the face of God? Ought we not to be seeing “the glory of God in the face of Christ” throughout our lives? Ought this not to be our daily exercise, our way of living? Seeking the face of Christ in the morning, the afternoon, the evening, through the night?

Christ draws us to Himself, He reveals Himself to us, through all of life – through the Scriptures, through His Body, through creation, through circumstances, through our desires; He is continuing unveiling Himself and drawing us, preparing us for greater and more complete unveilings of Himself…preparing us for the Great and Glorious Day that Augustine writes about when we will behold the face of God in a glory that surpasses all that we can imagine – His face and His glory will overwhelm all of our desires – enveloping us in the glory of the Trinity.