To Gaze on the Beauty of the Lord

For the Christian mystic, nothing could be greater, more pleasurable, more sublime an experience than to be granted a vision of the face of Christ.  Once or twice while in prayer, I have thought to discern the image of Jesus before me.  It has always been fleeting—and never distinct, lest I should fix my gaze upon my Lord’s exact features.  Rather, it is the semblance of Christ that I see.  It seems that He appears before me, not in the flesh but as a being of light or shining crystal.  I can discern that there are features, yet I am unable to focus on them.  I suppose if I were able to get a clear view of Jesus’ face, then I’d balk at every artist’s representation or actor’s depiction of our Lord, smugly saying, “That’s not what He looks like at all!”  But the face of Christ is never that clear.  It is His presence more than His physical face that is important anyway—and with that I am always content.

I suppose another reason for the vagueness of Jesus’ face within my mind is that, were I to enter into my time of prayer with determination to see Jesus’ face, I would simply be able to pull the image up from memory.  In essence, I’d be able to manufacture a vision, convincing myself that the Lord had chosen to appear to me again, whether or not He had.  Instead, it’s best to step carefully into prayer, meditation, and contemplation—without forming any image in my mind.  If the Lord chooses to bless me with a manifestation of His presence, I do not want to be guilty of trying to manipulate the manner in which He chooses to do so.

The psalmist says that He longs to dwell in house of the Lord, to gaze on God’s beauty and seek Him in His temple (Psalm 27:4).  This we can do every day in prayer.  The believer is the temple of God, and it is on the inward journey that we seek and find Him.  When I walk through the inner courts of my heart and mind, that’s where I’m likely to find him.  If I’m going to have a vision of Christ, it will be in quiet contemplation when I’m undistracted by the commotion and commerce of the world.

But that’s not the only way I can gaze upon His beauty.

Psalm 27:8 says, “Your face, Lord, I will seek.”  I must be actively seeking God’s face throughout my daily activities.  I don’t have to wait for mystical moments to come upon me, in order to see Jesus.  Verse 13 says, “I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.”  This means that a practical spirituality, and not always a head-in-the-clouds mysticism, will reveal the face of Christ in ways I never expected.  The beauty of new-fallen snow.  The whisper of winter wind.  The laughter of a child.  These things reveal the face of our Maker as surely as a vision—and far more often.  It’s in the land of the living that I will see the goodness of the Lord.  That is, if I wait for the Lord.

In The Meaning of Prayer, Harry Emerson Fosdick writes:

One has only to consider that frivolous American who in the Rembrandt room of the Amsterdam Gallery looked lackadaisically around the room and asked: “I wonder if there is anything here worth seeing”; one has only to recall the women who climbed an Alpine height on an autumn day, when the riot of color in the valley sobered into the green of the pines upon the heights, and over all stood the crests of eternal snow, and who inquired in the full sight of all this, “We have heard there was a view up here; where is it?” to see that there is a spiritual qualification for every experience, and that without it nothing fine and beautiful can ever be real to any one.  “Mr Turner,” a man once said to the artist, “I would never see any sunsets like yours.”  And the artist answered grimly,” No, sir.  Don’t you wish you could?”  How clearly then must the sense of God’s reality be a progressive and often laborious achievement of the spirit!  It is not a matter to be taken for granted, as though any one could saunter into God’s presence at any time, with any sort of life behind him, and at once perceive God there.

No, the manufacture of mystical experience is not for you or for me.  Sublime experiences in prayer are granted; they are not gotten by human striving.  If I want to intentionally experience the resplendent glory of God every day, then I must observe them with my eyes open.  I must look to the sunsets, the infants, the shriveled old ladies in nursing homes, and gentle breezes that whisper the name of God.  This is how I gaze upon the beauty of the Lord.  This is how I see the goodness of God in the land of the living.

Greg Smith is a Baptist minister who has served churches in Central and Southside Virginia. He lives in Halifax County, VA with his wife and children. To read more of Greg’s writings check out his blog at revgregsmith.blogspot.com.