Faces at the door

And the whole city was gathered around the door. And he cured many …. In the morning, when it was still dark, [Jesus] got up and went out to a deserted place …. When they found him, they said to him, ‘Everyone is searching for you.’ (Mark 1:33-37)

Faces. Just look at the faces. Forget your theology, your ideology, your politics and everything else that blinds or obscures or restricts your field of vision.

Just look and see, and you will know.

A black-haired girl with earnest eyes raises a crooked stick on which someone attached a ragged white flag ripped from a bed sheet. Around her lies the rubble of her life, a Gazan city of crumpled gray concrete broken in the bombardment, her punishment for having the bad judgment of being born at this time and place.

Miles away, in Jerusalem streets, weary faces walk in the torchlight wearing love’s worry for faces they fear they will never again see, hoping their shouts will bring their beloved home from captivity, while neighbors well-known to them mourn the slaughtered.

I don’t have to wonder at the expression of those who gathered at the Capernaum door of the house where Jesus was staying. I just watch the news and feel the ache of hearts longing for restoration, hoping to feel whole and safe, wrapped in love’s warmth, free from the fears that nag every moment of their waking existence and haunt their dreams so that there is no escape.

Nor need I wonder why Jesus’ friends panicked when they woke and didn’t see him sleeping across the room, his breathing keeping time with their own, reassuring them that the one essential soul in their life was not lost to them.

Faces, all of them, longing to feel seen and safe, whole and hopeful, hoping that the hidden soul within them might rest in the peace of Love’s presence.

‘Everyone is looking for you,’ Jesus’ friends breathed in anxious voice, upon finding him alone on a hillside.

Of course, we all are. The girl with the flag, the protestors in the street, the faces at Jesus’ door, you, me, the next guy who passes us on the street—all of us looking for a great love that can make us whole.

All of us, in one way or another, whether with flags or shouts, silent prayers or hidden longings we barely recognize within ourselves: We pray.

We pray because we are human and mortal and so very incomplete, yet still alive with the hope that there is One who can make us whole, One who completes us, One who is the longing of every human heart—One who is that very longing … living in the soul’s hidden depth.

And that One … begs to be seen in the eyes of that girl in Gaza, to be heard in the voices of those longing for their lost ones, and to be welcomed in the hidden corners of our hearts longing for Love’s healing touch.

We stand at the door, all of us, one great prayer, secretly bearing the Love who awakens our hope for Love’s completion.

David L. Miller