Meeting someone (even someone I've known for a long time) isn't a very fair business most of the time. Mostly I just want to know how he measures up. How he compares with . . . well . . . me. Is he smarter, better looking, funnier, richer, more engaging, kinder than I am? Does he have a better job or house or wife? I collect all the answers, make my own composite picture, and figure I know him. I have him pegged. Sized up. Frozen. But what if I'm wrong? What if he's a work in progress? What if the mess of a guy I see today will one day be so shining and free that I'd never recognize him?
“To love a person means to see him as God intended him to be.” Dostoevsky
"I don't like," he said, "even my wife to look at my verses before they're finished. God can't hide away his work till it is finished, as I do my verses, and we ought to take care what we say about it. God wants to do something better with people than people think." MacDonald, There and Back