But then, face to face

It happened again the other night.

I was upset, angry, anxious, exhausted minutes before. But when I walked down the stairs and saw my best friend sitting there, ready to talk with me, ready to take me away, ready to let us be together, something changed.

Have you ever experienced this? Maybe I'm the only one but though I love talking on the phone, there's something still so far away, longing, and not-yet fulfilled in it.

And as I sat at my computer this early spring night, it hit me. I don't know how, or why, except that perhaps God has given me just a little encouragement so that I'll press on.

Maybe it's the way I'm made, or maybe it's symptomatic of something wrong. I don't know what the case is, but of late I find myself often wishing my relationship with the Lord was greater, deeper, closer.

And of course I know those aren't bad things to hope for and pursue in the here and now. In fact, He has given us His very Holy Spirit as our Comforter and Guide. We know the Immanuel--God with us. He is no far away cosmic superintendent.

And yet my heart aches in the everyday seeking. I hear His Word...I read his letters to me...but they are never enough to fully satisfy. I want my man, not just his letters. His letters will only do me good for so long before I am overcome with homesickness of heart and must see him again!

And tonight, I realized anew with tear-inducing joy that it will not always be this hard. I will not always have to pray and seek and hope for answers not obscured by my sinful frailty. I will not always hope against hope that God will save from immeasurably difficult circumstances. I will not always struggle to believe that His work was finished--is finished already--in justifying me.

You see the joy that struck me in the late night lingering over work undone was this:

"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known"

We are already known. We are already the ones before a God with whom all things are naked and open before Him with whom we have to do. And yet the knowing was the perfect Son of God bearing our sins, knowing them fully and choosing them still. And so, we press on to the face-to-face days that will bring all joy and praise and rejoicing with them.

Just like walking down the stairs and seeing my best friend there, waiting, unrestrained in kindness and unobserving of my faults, so too one day. One day I'll see face to face, no more hiding, no more fighting the shame that has already been conquered, no more fear. Only perfect love, and knowing as I am and have been already known.