See His Face!

The author of the New York Times bestseller Theo of Golden walked into a Columbus, Georgia, Fountain City Coffee Shop, and he was fascinated by the artistic portraits that covered the walls of the coffee shop. These portraits became the inspiration for Allen Levi’s novel, Theo of Golden.

Theo, the main character of Theo of Golden, walks into a coffee shop and has a similar experience. Theo is intrigued as he looks at the many different faces that decorate the walls of “The Chalice,” the coffee shop in the novel. Theo loves to study the faces and tries to discern their character from the artistic portraits of their faces.

Chapter 42 in Theo of Golden has a lot to say about faces. Kendrick Whitaker, a custodian and a father of a young woman who had been injured in a car accident—the same car accident in which his wife was killed—was on his way to the office of Derrick Prentiss, the state’s counsel who was representing Kendrick and his daughter. As he walked to the lawyer’s office, it is stated, “Two faces kept coming to his mind: one, the suffering young face of his daughter in the first weeks after the crash; and the other, the weary, frightened face of Mr. Mateo Mendez, the little man.” Mateo Mendez was the illegal alien driving the car that hit the car his wife was driving on the night his wife died and his daughter was terribly injured.

Later in the chapter, after Kendrick has been incredibly gracious toward Mr. Mendez, he is in a conversation with Derrick Prentiss, his lawyer. Toward the end of this already intense conversation, Kendrick looks at Derrick Prentiss and says,

“Lawyer Derrick, can I ask you one more thing?”

“Sure.”

“I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but you don’t remember do me, do ya?”

Derrick looked closely at the young man across the desk. He frowned, then he shook his head. “No, sir. Mr. Whitaker, I don’t. Where would I know you from?”

“From the courthouse, about eighteen months ago. I think maybe you don’t remember me ‘cause you never looked at me. You didn’t look at me a single time. You put me in jail eighteen months ago for something I didden do. My little girl was seven. I was in jail almost a year. When she nearly died, I was in jail.”

Derrick shifted uncomfortably in his leather chair. “Mr. Whitaker, I’m sorry but I don’t remember anything about that. I handle a whole lot of cases. Sometimes too many and too quickly. I admit, I don’t really have time to look at everybody. What was your case about?”

“Oh, it don’t really make any difference. My real crime was that I was too poor to hire my own lawyer. The lawyer the court appoints, he don’t have time to look at nobody’s faces either. I told him I hadn’t done anything wrong, and I could prove it. But he said if I was smart, I’d plead guilty, even though I didn’t do anything wrong. I know you hear people say that all the time, even when they’re guilty, but sometimes it’s true. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, Mr. Derrick, and I know you deal with some mighty bad people, but it might do you good to look at some faces sometimes. There are some real people in those faces.”

Derrick sat quietly.

How many people do we see in a day? How many people do we truly “see” in a day?

There are some real people in those faces!

One of the things that makes Theo of Golden so powerful is that it is about a man, Theo, who had learned to see people.

One of my friends whom I talked into reading Theo of Golden told me a day or two later, “Well, I have started the book, and it is going pretty slow. But you are most certainly a good salesman.”

I am confident that if she will stick with it, it will be worth her while. This book is slow on purpose. It is calling us to slow down and learn the power of seeing people, seeing their faces.

In Psalm 27:8, we read, “When You said, ‘Seek My face,’ my heart said to You, ‘Your face, Lord, I will seek.’”

I believe that God’s face is on display all around us in the faces of the people whom God places in our path day by day by day. Do we see their faces? Do we see His Face?