Face Time

Face Time

There is no substitute for face time. Instant messaging, texting, e-mailing, and tweeting may fool us into thinking we are solidly connected—but these tools are illusory. If our relationships don’t have a real-life component, we can become a mile wide and an inch deep.

While speaking by phone to a friend in another state, I realized I didn’t have his e-mail address. When I asked for it, he said, “Sure—but if this were an e-mail, I couldn’t hear you laugh, or pick up the tone in your voice, or know how many seconds went by before I asked and you answered.”

Fair enough.

Technology can fool me into thinking I’ve connected with dozens of people during the course of a day, when I haven’t sat for more than a moment with a single living being. It may make me efficient, but it doesn’t help me to know deeply or be deeply known.

Is it any wonder, given our manic reliance on disembodied communication, that we imagine we can somehow know God apart from spending time in his presence? Reading theology is a useful pursuit, but that knowledge will only take me so far if it’s not matched by time spent in adoration or praise or confession or pleading before the one I’ve been reading about.

I’m becoming more and more convinced that my commitment to God is evidenced by my willingness to “waste” time—long stretches of it—before his face. The old hymn “Beneath the Cross of Jesus” says, “I ask no other sunshine than the sunshine of his face.” That’s a holy hunger, one that’s not easily satisfied with distant, fleeting sparks. That’s a longing for face time, and a confession that nothing less will do.

So if these words have resonated with you, don’t just be glad that you and I “connected.” Talk about them with someone over coffee. Call a friend you’ve drifted from and listen for as long as it takes to hear what you’ve been missing. But if you only do one thing, do this: sit still and expectant before the face of the one who never drifts and whose love never wanes. And when you think you’ve been there long enough, linger just a little while longer. You won’t regret it.

When you said, “Seek my face,” my heart said to You, “Your face, O LORD, I shall seek.”

Psalm 27:8, NASB