Seeking His Face Always!

One of the joys of being in a doctoral program at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary is that I am forced to read some wonderful books I might not otherwise read. Such is the exceptional book: The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God by Robert Louis Wilken. Dr. Wilken takes us back to the early days of the Christian church, to the days of the early church fathers, and it is a remarkale journey of rediscovering their faith and commitment to Christ.

The very chapter titles tell of the joys of this scholarly, but very readable, work:

1. Founded on the Cross of Christ 2. An Awesome and Unbloody Sacrifice 3. The Face of God for Now 4. Seek His Face Always 5. Not My Will But Thine 6. The End Given in the Beginning 7. The Reasonableness of the Faith 8. Happy the People Whose God is the Lord 9. The Glorious Deeds of Christ 10. Making This Thing Other 11. Likeness to God 12. The Knowledge of Sensible Things

He writes: "The intellectual tradition that began in the early Church was enriched by the philosophical breadth and exactitude of medieval thought. Each period in Christian history makes its own unique contribution to Christian life. The Church Fathers, however, set in place a foundation that has proven to be irreplaceable. Their writings are more than a stage in the development of Christian thought or an interesting chapter in the history of the interpretation of the Bible. Like an inexhaustible spring, faithful and true, they irrigate the Christian imagination with life-giving water flowing from the biblical and spiritual sources of the faith. They are still our teachers today."

Wilken shows that Christianity dramatically influenced the Greek-laced culture of the early days. It was Christianity that radically transformed the secular world, not the other way around. Christianity is a religion, a way of committed life, not a philosophy. It stresses love, compassion, service in the world, and worship. Wilken shows how the early Christians loved God in many aspects of their lives.

He takes his subtitle from a verse in the Psalms, Psalm 105:4: ''Seek his face always.'' When we intentionally seek to do this, God becomes part of each minute, not just a few minutes each week. May we also continually seek the face of God.