The Ultrasound on the Refrigerator

In March of 2019, David and Maria Solis pinned a grainy ultrasound photo to their refrigerator in San Antonio. The image was blurry — a smudge of gray and white, barely recognizable as human. But they had already named her. Sofia. They had already painted her room a pale yellow, already bought impossibly small socks, already argued lovingly over whose nose she might have.

Sofia was their daughter. Fully, completely, irrevocably theirs. And yet they had never seen her face. They didn't know the sound of her cry or the grip of her tiny fingers. Everything about who she would become — her first word, her laugh, her favorite song — remained beautifully hidden.

But here is what mattered: because they knew she was coming, they prepared. They childproofed the cabinets. They read the parenting books. They rearranged their entire lives around someone they loved but had not yet fully seen.

John writes with the same breathless wonder: "See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God — and that is what we are!" We are His children now. The identity is settled. But what we will ultimately become has not yet been revealed. We know only this: when Christ appears, we will be like Him, because we will finally see Him as He is. And that hope — that certain, radiant hope — reshapes how we live today. We prepare. We purify. We rearrange our lives around the One we love but have not yet fully seen.