Faces
AM Psalm 16, 17 • PM Psalm 22
Deut. 31:7-13,24-32:4 • Rom 10:1-13 • Matt. 24:15-31
“There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet…”
In Psalm 17:15 today we read: “As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness (KJV).” This verse in particular struck me because only a few days ago Robert Willis, dean of Canterbury Cathedral, quoted it in Morning Prayers with his online “garden congregation.” The usual Christian interpretation is that after our death we expect to see God face-to-face in our resurrection. But Dean Robert takes a different slant. To him, it’s about getting up every morning and looking in his shaving mirror to see his own face as a reflection of God’s presence right here on earth, right now.
As with Eliot’s Prufrock, we have many faces. Happiness, pride, pain, anger, grief—we can reveal, or hide, our deepest feelings. Self-assurance or insecurity—we are masters at disguise. But when we’re all alone with a mirror, well, there we are.
My phases of mirror-gazing have changed with time, from the teen years of choosing the most fetching shade of lipstick; through the rushed mornings of family life, when John and the children and I jostled for place before the mirrors in our haste to get to school and work; to my middle age, when looking in the mirror I wondered when I had become my mother; and on to my late years, as I move through the house without noticing the mirrors, except for the one over the sink where I stand and wonder who this old person is looking back at me.
But because I like Dean Robert’s idea of seeing God in the mirror—and because we are taught that we are created in God’s own image—and because our face presents the face of Jesus to the world, I plan to start picking up the mirror in the morning and hope to see the likeness of God there too.
Written by Kay DuVal
I tried it this morning, and I caught a faint glimmer of God there. I’m going to keep working at it. Try it with me?