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My Father’s face

Terrie Todd

My family and I had an experience recently that most people never will: meeting for the first time a family member who had been adopted out as an infant 20 years ago. My brother-in-law is her biological father and had been in contact with her for a few months before they finally met face to face last week. Then he brought her to our house, where she met her rather nervous grandparents, cousins and me. What a fascinating encounter! I found myself unable to take my eyes off this lovely girl, as I observed not only the expected physical family resemblance, but the mannerisms and speech patterns of her biological parents and siblings. So many little idiosyncracies – the movement of the face, the rolling of the eyes, the raising of the eyebrows – which I wouldn’t have been able to name in my brother-in-law, suddenly became obvious in this complete stranger, making us feel like we’d known her all along. No doubt, her adopted parents had noticed the same things in my brother-in-law when they had met him earlier that day. I wondered if he could see it himself.

There’s more to ponder here, too. As children of God, I wonder whether others can see our Father reflected in us. Those who don’t know Him have nothing to recognize – but His attractiveness ought to be there whether they understand why or not. And those who know Him well should identify Him in us without being told that we are His.

That’s what ought to be. Unfortunately, the gap between what ought to be true and what is true is often far too wide. If my niece, who had never spent a day with her earthly father, can look so much like him, how much more can we look like our heavenly Father if we’ll just spend time with Him? If it is the desire of our hearts to look like Him, we should pray for His help to move that desire from our hearts to our minds, where ideas are pondered, decisions are made, words are spoken and actions are executed.

“We, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. . . . For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Corinthians 3:18; 4:6).

Terrie Todd lives in Portage la Prairie, Man.

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Last modified May 23, 2001.

© 2001 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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