Face to Face

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          Not many people write letters anymore (if you don’t believe me, ask the struggling post offices all around the country). Rarely is there time for a setting down of thoughts and ideas and plans and hopes and dreams and experiences on a sheet of paper. Instead, we email, text, or call each other in the rare moments we can spare in the middle of doing something else that is urgent or pressing. I’m grateful that God took the time to write letters to us, each one filled with the truth, wisdom, and encouragement we need to know Him and run the race well. In this we are blessed because without His letters we have no way of knowing Christ and His sacrifice for us.
          While receiving a letter or talking on the phone with someone we love is pleasant, it is not anywhere near as satisfying as speaking with that person face to face. John expresses this thought in the Second Letter of John when he says, “Though I have many things to write to you, I do not want to do so with paper and ink; but I hope to come to you and speak face to face, so that your joy may be made full” (vs. 12, NASB). John taught and encouraged these believers through the letters he wrote, but he longed to be with them in person so that he could share the part of his heart he couldn’t pour out onto paper. Paul expresses this same frustration with the limitations of knowing only part of the whole picture; in I Cor. 13:12, he says, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.”  This same longing is expressed in the last verse of the old hymn “Face to Face with Christ My Savior”:
Face to face—oh, blissful moment!
Face to face—to see and know;
Face to face with my Redeemer,
Jesus Christ Who loves me so.
Don’t get me wrong—I’m so glad that I have the ultimate love letter from God in the Word, but the older I get, the more I crave the face to face reunion

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