Under the Unpredictable Plant: An Exploration in Vocational Holiness

p. 12

Jonah fled from the face of God–i.e. the presence of God. Face is “a metaphor charged with complex and intimate experience. In infancy, as our eyes gradually focus, the face becomes our first vista. By means of the parental face we know ourselves as ourselves and in its expressions learn our place in the world. In the face we acquire trust and affection (or, in some terrible cases, rejection and abuse). Our formative years are spent looking up into the face and we grow toward what we are looking up into.”