IS YOUR FACE TOWARDS ME?

Somewhere I read of a young man whose wife had died, leaving him with a small son. Back home from the cemetery on the day of the funeral, he and his son went to bed early because, in his sorrow, the young widower could think of nothing else he could bear to do. As he lay there in the darkness, grief-stricken, numb with sorrow, the little boy broke the spell from his bed with a disturbing question: "Daddy, where is Mommy?"

The young father tried to answer the boy and tried to get him to go to sleep, but the question kept coming from his confused, childish mind. "Where is Mommy? When is she coming home?"

After a while the father got up and brought the little boy to bed with him. But the child was still disturbed and restless, persistently asking his probing, heart-breaking questions.

Finally the little boy reached out his hand through the darkness and placed it on his father's face, asking, "Daddy, is your face towards me?" Given assurance, both verbally and by his own touch, that his father's face was indeed toward him, the little boy said, "If your face is toward me, I think I can go to sleep." And in a little while, he was quiet.

The father lay there in the darkness and in childlike faith prayed, "O God, the way is dark and I confess that I do not see my way through right now, but if Your face is toward me, somehow I think I can make it."

We can make it if God's face is toward us -- and certainly that's the case. God's face is always toward us. 

    “The Lord make His face shine on you,
    And be gracious to you;
    The Lord lift up His countenance on you,
    And give you peace.”  (Numbers 6:25-26)

-- Maxie Dunnam in “Living the Psalms: A Confidence for All Seasons”