Kissing the Face of God (Morgan Weistling)

I LOVE this print by Morgan Weistling.  Here is the artist’s description of the piece:

“This painting was first inspired by a song that I heard one day. I started to contemplate the awesome privilege that Mary was given, being able to hold God in her arms, but also keeping in mind that He was still her baby. This cute little child whom she bore was also God in the flesh. And yet, she cuddled and kissed Him, just as all mothers do with their babies. This thought propelled me right into this painting which I wanted to be a very human representation of divinity. My prayer is that the viewer will be struck, as I am, with the amazing way that God chose to send His Son into this world — in pure humility.”

— Morgan Weistling

We are starting a new semester at IHOP-U and last week was New Student Orientation.  On Wednesday night, they had some of the main leaders set up as a panel across the stage for a Q&A time so that the new students could get to know us a little better.  Stephen and I were in the first group.   It’s funny… because of my role at FSM and at IHOP for the last however many years, I have had to be in front of big and little groups of people all the time.  But I never seem to get totally used to it.  I just don’t like being in front of people or being the center of attention.  I never have.  It’s truly out of love and obedience that I can even do it, to be honest.  And to be lined up in chairs across a stage with spotlights on you and asked random questions without really knowing what they would be in advance, some relatively personal, well, that’s just not my idea of a good time folks.  Just to be honest.  (I love our students though, so it makes it all worth it.)

My little Noah seems to have inherited that same little thing in his personality.  I still remember the sheer terror when my family thought their little girl was so cute that I needed to perform and you know, “do something cute and amazing” for the “crowds.”  I hated it!  I try to keep that in mind when I have the same parental urges for everyone to experience the wonder and cuteness of Noah that I so love and adore… I have to remember when he doesn’t always perform on cue that Noah’s real beauty and wonder as a little person is reserved for the few and not the many   That is essentially true for all of us, in slightly varying degrees, I suspect.  I love that about humanity, actually.  It makes the insight we are given into someone else’s soul an honor and a privilege and not something to be taken for granted.

Anyway, I digress…

So one of the questions that was asked that night was, “aside from Jesus, who is your personal hero?”  I knew that answer and could’ve answered it without thinking, but alas… that wasn’t the question I was asked.  I’m always struck by the answer to that question though… it’s so revealing of our hearts and our passions.  In our friend Stuart’s case, also revealing of great wit… his spontaneous and theologically witty answer was “The Holy Spirit.”   So funny.    And so answers that night ranged from Moses to Jeremiah to a woman named Anna (not the Biblical Anna) that had spent her life in prayer and intercession with no one even realizing the greatness of her ministry before the Lord.

Who are your heroes and why?

Mine?  Well… I have three… (after, of course, the Holy Three)

My dad was always my hero growing up.  I talked about it at his memorial service in January of this year.  I truly imagined that as he sat in his pajamas drinking coffee at 5am every morning, what he was really doing was planning how he would be saving the world that day.  And I have to say, my dad really did do superhero things – one time he ran into a twin-engine plane that had crashed on the highway to rescue the family inside while I watched in awe of my SuperDad.  At which point, I, as a very brave 5-year-old, made my contribution to superherodom by giving all the kids Life Savers – wintergreen I believe!  He really was a superhero to me as a little girl… as probably most of us feel about our fathers (if we’re lucky).  And then I grew up, and I realized that the man I had seen as a superhero was just a regular man who faltered quite a bit, just as we all do, as he made his way through the wilderness of this age looking for ‘the something more than this,’ our great Hope.  And he wasn’t really saving the world in the ways I’d imagined either, but he became a more realistic hero to me.  My dad struggled under the weight of pain, physically, emotionally, in every way you could imagine, for much of his life.  He is free now – Praise be to God.  But while he was still with us on the earth, he had a choice… he could sink under the weight of it all and give up… or he could keep putting one foot in front of the other, limping profoundly at times, and finish the race.  He could have quit… some might even name plenty of seemingly valid reasons why he should have.  But my dad did not quit.   There was a quiet strength in him… a good strength that I am grateful to have witnessed and hopefully even inherited a bit of.   So my dad is definitely one of my heroes in so many ways… ways that are much more evident now that he is with the Lord.  He endured… and endurance, even if we fall down a bunch of times and have to get back up with dirt on our face, is HUGE in the eyes and heart of God.

And then there is my husband… I wouldn’t even know where to begin to explain the depth of Stephen’s heroism in my life.  He is my own personal hero… he has rescued my heart in ways that are too intimate to convey on a blog, ways that only the Lord and I really know.  He has my heart as much as the Lord allows it to be so between a man and a woman, and he somehow seems to win it still more and more each day.  He is the thief that was given the key to my heart.  But more than anything else, Stephen is my hero because of who he is in secret… the Stephen no one else sees, but I get to see, at least in part.  I remember a woman came up to me at a conference after Stephen spoke several years ago and said, “you must be so proud to be his wife.”  It kind of took me off guard and without thinking my response was, “Well, yes, I am really humbled [not so much "proud"] to be his wife… but not because he is a good preacher or teacher, but because I get to know who he really is when no one else is looking… and that is greater than anything that will ever be seen on a platform.”  I am awestruck by this man who is my husband.  Some days, it still kind of freaks me out.  I can’t believe I get to share my life with this person!  What an unfathomable blessing.  He provokes me in the place of prayer and living for Eternity, causes my heart to love Jesus more, reminds me of the narrow road before me and gives me courage to travel it.  Stephen is my hero in a million big and little ways…  ways that I cannot even begin to write of… he is a gift that only God could give.

And then my greatest hero is… drum roll please…   My Biblical hero is Mary, Mother of Jesus… (and you could put the other two Marys in there but at a distant second).   This all goes back to the picture above… Kissing the Face of God.  As I’ve said in previous blogs, as Protestants, we have put so much effort into distancing ourselves from the heresies around the Virgin Mary that we have overlooked the profound gift and favor that God bestowed upon this little Jewish girl 2000 years ago.   Mary carried GOD in her womb for nine glorious months and when the time was right, she delivered Him into the earth in a dirty little stable in Bethlehem.   She looked upon her firstborn son and beheld His beauty and felt things in her heart that only a mother can understand in those first few moments with your child… but think about this, she wasn’t just gazing at her first child, she was beholding GOD Himself in the flesh.  GOD was a little baby looking up at her with squinty eyes overwhelmed by the light that He actually created!   Mary was holding her Savior in her arms, and as she kissed the little baby that filled her heart with a mother’s joy, she was in fact kissing the very face of God.  Mary nursed the Creator of galaxies at her breast and sustained the life of the Word made flesh as He grew in strength and wisdom on the earth.   Think about watching Jesus interact with His brothers and sisters or knowing who He really was as He walked through the synagogue unnoticed and unseen though the words they read were His story.   Mary knew something about Jesus in a way that no one else did while He was on the earth, simply because of how He was conceived within her.  (Um, that last statement alone causes my heart to tremble… “how HE was conceived within her.”)  Even if in her humanity it didn’t all make sense (and I’m sure she didn’t completely understand), she knew that she knew He wasn’t a normal man like any other man… not just a teacher, not just a prophet, but the Son of God Himself.   (Luke 1:35)  The word says that she treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart… as she watched Jesus, her son, grow, she was pondering God, gazing on His beauty, doing the one thing needed and the one thing desired.  (Luke 10:38-42, Psalm 27:4)  And a sword would truly pierce her heart… can you imagine the depth of Mary’s love and pain as she watched her son and her Savior die on the Cross?  And can you imagine the heights of her joy at the Resurrection… and when she at last saw Him again face to face when her time on earth was spent.   I think (and this is personal conjecture, not absolute truth) that Jesus even looks like Mary… again, this is my opinion, but can you imagine looking at the face of God, the second Person of the Trinity, and realizing that He has your nose or your eyes!?!?  That is INSANE!  

So why is she my hero?  Because all I really want is to be that close to Jesus.  I want that kind of invitation into who He is and what He’s like.  I want to spend ALL OF ETERNITY in that proximity to Him.  You know, the foundations of the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21) may have the names of the twelve apostles on them… and people may talk (imagine) of what specific “job” they will be doing in the Age to Come when we rule and reign with Christ in the Millennial Kingdom… but personally, my goal and my heart’s desire is to be wherever it is that Mary dwells in the Age to Come, if that’s possible.  I want to be that close to Jesus, sit at His feet and hear His voice, make Him dinner (don’t laugh… He ate after the Resurrection, you know!) wash His feet with my endlessly grateful tears, love Him, worship Him, and minister to His every desire…  why would I do anything else or go anywhere else!?  I don’t know if that is real (in terms of actual eternal ”job descriptions”) but that is my desire.  I call it the “Mary Room” in the Age to Come   Where all the Mary’s (Mary of Bethany, Mary His mother, and Mary Mag) dwell for Eternity with Christ… and maybe a broken little vessel named Karli.   I just made that place up, obviously, (so don’t go quoting me on that like it’s a theological truth), but it (the heart behind it) is where every fiber of my being longs to be… that close, that dear, that near to my Jesus for my forever. 

So, who are you heroes and why?