Yearning for Face Time

Scripture – 1 Thessalonians 3:10 (NRSV)

Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you face to face and restore whatever is lacking in your faith.

Devotion

If you utter the phrase “face time” in today’s world, almost everyone will think you’re talking about Apple’s FaceTime communication platform. I expect you know that FaceTime allows you to speak with someone via your mobile phone while also seeing their face, not just hearing their voice.

But the phrase “face time” antedates mobile technology and the Internet. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “face time” is a colloquial expression used mainly in the United States. In 1988, for example, an article in London’s The Observer said, “I have business lunches all the time. The Americans call it ‘doing face time.’” Back in the day, doing face time with someone meant being physically present with them, meeting with them face to face.

Had the Apostle Paul and his colleagues been speakers of colloquial American English, they may well have shared with the Christians in Thessalonica their desire for “face time” with them. As you may recall, Paul and his team were able to spend only a little while in Thessalonica before opposition to the gospel forced them to move on. Yet they continued to feel strong concern for their converts. That’s one main reason they wrote the letter we call 1 Thessalonians. It’s also why Paul sent Timothy from Athens to Thessalonica to check on and encourage the believers there.

But letters and visits weren’t enough for Paul. His passionate concern for the Thessalonians and their wellbeing made him yearn for more personal engagement. Thus he writes, “Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you face to face and restore whatever is lacking in your faith” (1 Thessalonians 3:10). If Paul had been writing in English, he may have said, “Night and day we pray most earnestly that we might get some face time with you.”

We live in such a different world than that of the Apostle Paul, one in which “face time” suggests a digital connection rather than an embodied one. In many ways, I’m glad for the technology that allows us to communicate in words, gestures, tones, and facial expressions when we cannot be physically present with each other. I can’t imagine how I would have been able to do my work during the past two-and-a-half years without Zoom, for example. I estimate that 95% of my meetings in the last thirty months have been via Zoom. I work closely and happily with people I have rarely or never seen in person. Yet I am familiar with their faces. I know their smiles in addition to the sound of their laughter.

Yet, perhaps like Paul and his team, I do feel as if something is lacking when I cannot have actual face time with people. Or, to put it positively, something is gained when I see someone in person. I think of a time I met one of my De Pree Center colleagues, someone with whom I had worked for nine months without ever being together in person because of COVID. When I finally met with her during a team lunch, she seemed, well, more real to me, more fully human, more completely alive. Plus, though we’d done well with digital communication, being able to talk in person added nuances that I missed in our Zoom calls. So, even though I still don’t see this person very often, I’m glad to have met her in real time and in real space.

Though I’m grateful for digital technology like email, Facebook, Instagram, and Zoom, I’m aware of its limitations. Thus, I recognize that I need to make an effort to be with people in person when it’s possible and wise to do so. This is especially true when it comes to my teammates, work associates, friends, family members, small group members, and fellow worshipers. So I’m glad, for example, that Michaela, the De Pree Center’s executive director, is bringing together in person our dispersed team in the fall. For a couple of days we’ll be able not only to “do meetings,” but also to “do face time.” I fully expect that this will enrich our relationships and therefore our collegiality and ultimately our productivity.

Working and engaging with people digitally can be a gift, but a gift with limitations. There are times when we, like the Apostle Paul, need to be physically present with the people in our lives, including our colleagues and associates. FaceTime doesn’t replace good, ol’ fashioned “face time,” that is, being with people face to face.

Find all Life for Leaders devotions here. Explore what the Bible has to say about work at the High Calling archive, hosted at the unique website of our partners, the Theology of Work Project. Commentary on today’s Life for Leaders theme can be found here: Facebook: Rediscovering 14th Century Community Values

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