His Father's Face

In 1943, a young war bride named Margaret Ellis sat in a hospital ward in Bristol, England, holding her newborn son. Her husband Robert was stationed somewhere in North Africa. She had married into the Ellis family quickly, before Robert shipped out, and had never met his father — a shipyard worker who died of pneumonia the winter before the wedding.

But when Robert's mother arrived and peered into the blanket, she pressed her hand to her mouth. "That's Thomas," she whispered. "That's his grandfather's face."

Margaret looked down at the infant — the broad forehead, the slight cleft in the chin, the way his eyes narrowed when he yawned — and for the first time, she saw a man she had never met. The invisible became visible in the features of his descendant.

Paul tells the Colossians that Jesus Christ is "the image of the invisible God." No one has seen the Father. No one can. But look at Christ — at His compassion for the broken, His authority over storms and demons, His willingness to lay down everything — and you are seeing the face of the Almighty. He is not merely like God. He is, as the Greek word eikon suggests, the exact visible representation of the One no eye can behold. In Him, the invisible Father steps into view.