'The look on their faces'

There is a beauty salon across the street from our church that has posters in the windows featuring several "do's," some on men , some on women. When I happen to park my car facing that building, my eye inadvertently falls upon those faces and the effect on me is unpleasant.

If you have ever read C.S. Lewis' The Magician's Nephew, in the fourth chapter Polly and Digory find themselves in the ruin of a castle in which is a long row of petrified figures in magnificent clothing:

"Digory was … interested in the faces. … The people sat in their stone chairs, on each side of the room. … You could walk down and look at the faces in turn. … 'They were nice people, I think,' said Digory.'… Both the men and women looked kind and wise, and they seemed to come of a handsome race. But after the children had gone a few steps down the room they came to faces that looked a little different. These were very solemn faces. You felt you would have to mind your P's and Q's, if you ever met living people who looked like that.

"When they had gone a little further, they found themselves among faces they didn't like: this was about the middle of the room. The faces here looked very strong and proud and happy, but they looked cruel. A little further on they looked crueler. Further on again, they were still cruel but they no longer looked happy."

The faces on the posters at the salon across the street from our church remind me of those faces going bad by degrees. The kindness of our race is gone from those hair models-along with wholesomeness and purity. Instead "the faces here [look] very strong and proud and happy," but with a hint of "cruel."

It is a very terrible thing to watch the faces of the kings and queens God made to rule his Garden growing prouder and crueler as the rejection of God deepens (Romans 1). Who would have thought you could tell so much by the look on a face?

"For the look on their faces bears witness against them" (Isaiah 3:9).

And to think that we are only "about the middle of the room."