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On June 4, 1924, British mountaineer
Noel Odell peered from the base camp of Mount Everest at two tiny,
moving specks. For a moment George Mallory and Andrew “Sandy” Irvine
climbed toward its then untrodden summit before being obscured by fog.
Seventy-five years later, Mallory was found at 27,000 feet by a team of
climber-researchers. They read an Anglican service of burial before
building a rock cairn around his body.
“No one can see my face and live,” God declares to Moses (Ex 33:20). The
Gospel of John goes further: “no one has ever seen God” (Jn 1:18a). The
declaration “I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is
preserved,” may seem to defy this trend. Yet its speaker was no longer
Jacob but Israel, renamed for having “striven with God and humans, and
prevailed” (32:28).
Perilous as it is, the vision of God is the object of our hope: “When
[God] is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is” (1
Jn 3:2).
Whether veiled in time or unveiled in eternity, perceiving God pulls us through a doorway. We are never unchanged.
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