Advent: What does your voice look like?

 As you may know, I work from home - and I've been working from home for over 10 years, so when the pandemic hit last year, I was already very experienced in the challenges of remote working.  In fact, while most people were adjusting to talking to people they already knew over Zoom and Teams, I was carrying on as usual.  And in my case, that means working with people that I haven't met face-to-face. 

In September, I became the manager of my team, and out of a team of eight people, I've only met one of them in person.  More recently, I've been recruiting and interviewing people - again, without meeting them face-to-face.  I was interviewed for my job over the phone (Zoom wasn't a thing 10 years ago); now I'm interviewing via video conference.  That's technology for you.

When I first started remote working, everything was done over email and over the phone (with screen sharing over the computer), and all I had to work with was a voice and a name, and possibly a profile picture.  Even my manager and my team mates were voices and names, which slowly developed into personalities.  However, one of the things I inevitably did was to imagine faces for the people I was speaking to.  In my imagination, men with deep voices were generally taller (longer necks, larger lungs), while men with higher voices were shorter.  

It's a very strange experience when you meet somebody in person after having constructed an imaginary persona for them without knowing what they look like - all the knowledge, memories and experience of working with Jim, or Roger, or Carolyn, suddenly and immediately collide with the actual person you're meeting.  It's the exact opposite of meeting a stranger for the first time, and not knowing anything about them - the mental whiplash is bizarre (especially when your mental image of them is completely wrong).

There's also a different experience when you're on a conference call with multiple people but no video - and somebody starts speaking.  Who is that?  Who does that sound like?  What are they saying?  Who would normally use those words and ask those types of question?  What kind of accent is that?  One of my colleagues once commented that it's like watching an animated movie and trying to work out who the voice actors are!

So:  what does your voice look like?  We can build up a mental image of somebody based on their emails, their writing, and even in some conversations, but there is still this gap between who you are and what your voice looks like (have you ever watched Blind Date?).

What does God's voice look like?  The nation of Israel knew God's voice and had carefully written down and kept what He'd said, to form the Scriptures.  Did they know God?  Sort of, maybe, perhaps.  Did they know what His voice looked like?  No.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning.  The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.  No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is Himself God and is at the Father’s side, has made Him known." 
John 1:1, 1:14, 1:18

What does God's voice look like?

Jesus.