“When you said, ‘Seek My face,’ my heart said to You, ‘Your face, Lord, I will seek.’” Ps.27:8
More times than most of us would care to admit, our pursuit of God is for His hand rather than His face. At those times our seeking after Him is primarily because of the favorable circumstantial blessings He can so ably supply. This is not to say that it is wrong to pray specifically for God’s provisions in our lives. The scripture calls us to this very thing. Rather it is a question of priority. What do we want most? His face or His hand? Do we want our roots to penetrate to a deeper stratum than simply what He can provide? Augustine put it so well,
“And what do I love when I love You? Not physical beauty…or the radiance of light that pleases the eye, or the sweet melody of old familiar songs, or the fragrance of flowers and ointments and spices… None of these do I love when I love my God. Yet there is a kind of light, and a kind of melody, and a kind of fragrance, and a kind of food, and a kind of embracing when I love my God. They are the kind of light and sound and odor and food and love that affect the senses of the inner man. …It hears melodies that never fade with time. It inhales lovely scents that are not blown away by the wind. It eats without diminishing or consuming the supply. It never gets separated from the embrace of God and never gets tired of it. That is what I love when I love my God.”
May our roots go deep enough to push past the provisions of His hand to the breathtaking wonder of His face. The provisions of God on this earth are wonderful blessings, never to be minimized. But only the supernatural presence of the living God can ravish and satisfy those deepest parts of our being. As Augustine notes, it is only the nearness of God that provides “the kind of light and sound and odor and food and love that affect the senses of the inner man.” May God grant that our roots deepen every year and that the cry of our heart increasingly echoes that of David, “When you said, ‘Seek My face,’ my heart said to You, ‘Your face, Lord, I will seek.’” Nothing else can satisfy our depths more fully or purely. Or more delight the heart of God.
