Countenance

"A face being our first visual memory of the world acts as a key to everything. Somehow seeing the forms of a face returns one to our eternal humanness. It is a recognition of seeing for the first time, you ever saw a face. The countenance of the face is a constant form in my work.

countenance

This phrase is a picture of a father smiling and taking pleasure in his child. When the Lord lifts His countenance upon us, it shows that He is looking on us for our good. God wants to bless us. He wants to protect us. He wants to make His face to shine upon us and be gracious to us, and give us peace. Here in the Blessing, the most obvious meaning for this phrase is that God accepts us.

May we all have this vision! Not just of our losses restored to us, but all that we will be in the resurrection. May we write His name in our hearts, may we pray with all the energy of heart to be filled with His love. May we find His image not only in our own countenances, but in the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger (or immigrant), the naked, the sick, and the imprisoned. The glory of ourselves in that future day is unimaginable, though I have seen glimpses of it: what we can be but are not yet. I pray you will be able to see that for yourself as well.

And when the Lord goes on working the cures of grace it is wonderful how he removes from the countenance the lines and furrows of want. The lantern jaws of hunger are seen in many who are pining after Christ and grace, and cannot find either; but when Christ comes he satiates the soul, and makes fat the bones, and the countenance of the heart is glad.

The health which our Lord Jesus works in us is seen in the spiritual countenance in many ways. First, it makes the eyes bright. A man full of doubts and fears, or vexed with ambition or love of the world, has no bright transporting hopes, but the man who believes in Jesus has a hope that when days and years are past he shall be in heaven where Jesus is. I must confess that sometimes when I try to realise that hope my physical eye grows dim, because the tears begin to flow, and almost blind me. Shall I, shall I ever see his face and cast a crown at his feet? I shall, I know I shall; but oh, it does seem too good to be true. While the physical eye is thus dimmed how bright the spiritual eye becomes with such a hope to cheer it.

Again, here is infinite atonement also. God is not only willing to pardon, but he can do it consistently with justice, for his own dear Son has bled and died. When I turn my eyes to the Son of God bleeding upon the cross, so glorious is his sacrifice in my eyes that I conclude that if there were ten thousand thousand worlds full of sinners there must be merit enough in the death of Christ to save them all, if God had so willed it; for we cannot conceive any bound to the merit of the dying Son of God. Incarnate Deity smarts beneath the lash of justice, is pierced to the heart, is slain, is laid for three days in the grave! Why, there must be a splendour of power about that majestic sacrifice, illimitable, inconceivable. Come, soul, if this be thy healing no disease can stand against it. Infinite mercy armed with an infinite atonement can accomplish all things. O God, thou art indeed the health of my countenance, by thee I am brought back from my death in sin. 041b061a72