Dimly

"For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known." — 1 Corinthians 13:12

I have been sitting with this verse all week, which is not what I expected.

I expected to sit with a death verse this week. I expected Revelation or Romans or one of the psalms about the shadow of the valley, because All Saints is Sunday and the dead are on my mind and the dead usually come with their own verses. But the verse that stopped me this week was not about death. It was about seeing.

For now we see in a mirror, dimly. I know what dimly looks like. I know what a mirror looks like when the glass is old and the silver is spotted and the face looking back at you is yours but not quite — the edges blurred, the details softened, the person in the glass someone you recognize but could not describe to a stranger.

That is how I see Earl now. Seven years and the face I knew better than my own has gone a little dim. I can see the shape of him. I can see the shoulders and the cap and the way he stood in the kitchen doorway with his weight on one foot. I can see the hands. But the details — the exact line of the jaw, the color of the eyes in morning light, the way his mouth moved when he was about to say something he thought was funny — those are dimming, and I cannot stop them, and the dimming is its own grief, quieter than the first grief and in some ways worse because the first grief was the loss of the man and this grief is the loss of the memory of the man.

But Paul does not stop at dimly. Paul says *then*. Then we will see face to face. Then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And the fully is the word I have been sitting with, because fully is the opposite of dimly, and the verse promises that the dimming is temporary, and the face I am losing in the mirror is not lost — it is being kept somewhere I cannot see yet, and one day the mirror will clear and the face will be sharp again and I will see him the way I saw him when I was twenty-five and he was standing at the altar and the light was on his face and I knew every line.

That is a love verse. People read it at weddings and they are right to read it at weddings, but it is also a grief verse, and it is also an All Saints verse, and this morning it is all three.

Lord, I see dimly. I trust the then.