Our Father’s Face
Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved! —Psalm
80:3
Asaph, the author
of this psalm, looked north from his vantage point in Jerusalem and saw Judah's
sister state, Israel, collapse under the weight of the Assyrian Empire. With
her buffer state gone, Judah was vulnerable to invasion from all sides—Assyria
from the north, Egypt from the south and the Arab nations from the east. She
was out-numbered, out-matched, out-gunned.
Asaph
gathers up his fears in a prayer, three times repeated (80:3,7,18), "Let
your face shine that we may be saved." (“Let me see your smile.”)
Faces are
us. A frown, a sullen look, a smile and crinkly eyes—reveal what we feel about
others. Our faces are our "tell."
I remember
my father's face. It was hard to read. (He was a kind man, but stoic and
self-contained.) As a child, I often searched his face, looking for a smile, or
other show of affection.
It's good
to look away from our fears and search our Heavenly Father's face, though it
too is not always easy to read. The best way to see God’s face is to look at
the Cross, and "the man of His right hand, the son of man whom He made
strong!" (80:17). The Cross is His "tell" (John 3:16). Good
Friday is God's smile writ large!
So know
this: When your Father looks at you, he has a great big smile on His face.
You're very safe!
As, hungering
for his father's face and eyes,
The child
throws wide the door, back to the wall,
I run to
Thee, the refuge from poor lies...
—George
MacDonald, The Diary of an Old Soul, December 15
David Roper
8/25/16
