Face to Face
Hasn’t it been great to have a few of the restrictions unlocking in recent days so that we can see our friends and family face to face.
We still can’t go into other’s homes, and so there have been
some chilly moments in gardens and parks, but it’s still wonderful to actually
see people.
As a family, over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been able
to catch up with all the grandparents too which has been lovely. It’s been a
long wait for so many.
There’s nothing like seeing someone face to face. Zoom and
facetime, emails and phone calls are all great, and I don’t know how we would
have got through the last year without them, but there’s nothing like face to
face. You avoid the painful delays, glitches, misunderstandings and
miscommunications that sometimes happen with talking online. With zoom you can
miss a whole sentence, because someone’s still on mute!
As a church at Christ Church Huntingdon we have just enjoyed
5 services over Easter that were face to face, [or as our good friends in the
Huntingdon Parish call it, “in real life”]! And there’s no doubt that face to
face services are after nearly a year of services that are online.
But it’s not just in modern day that people prefer face to
face to distant communication. In the Bible, 2000 years ago, Jesus’ disciple
John writes a letter to his friends and says, “I have much to write to you, but I do not want to use paper and ink.
Instead, I hope to visit you and talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete”.
(2 John 1:12)
And Paul, another of Jesus’ apostles, compared knowing God
now to the reflections in a mirror, probably dim and distorted in those days.
But he said, “For now we see only a reflection
as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face”. (1 Cor 13:12).
We can know God now, but it’s not perfect. It’s like being on
a zoom call. A bit distant, imperfect. Not that there’s anything imperfect
about Him, or his communication, but you could say the bad signal is all at our
end of the line! But Christians look forward to the day when Jesus comes back,
and when we can see him face to face. “Then we shall see Face to face”. That
will be wonderful.
Thank you for listening.