Rhetorical Answer

Rhetorical questions are dangerous. The person asking might not be expecting an answer, but that doesn't mean that my brain isn't going to devote hours to thinking about them anyway. Recently, a dear friend posed just such a question. And while I believe that she understands the depths this question plumbs, I don't know if she is expecting a response. This is for her.

The question is, can you miss someone you've never met?

My DH has several relatives that meant a great deal to his whole family, but they passed away before I met him. I wish I could have gotten to know them. So, in a sense, their absence creates a hole that cannot be filed. Does that longing mean that I miss them? I have friends across the globe that I know only through means of electronic communication. Can their distance cause pain? Do I have a right to grieve when they are gone?
Can you miss something that you never had in the first place? I dare you to ask that of any mother who has lost a child in the womb.
By extension, can you be homesick for a place you've never even seen?

"By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God....These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city." Heb 11:8-10, 13-16

 The writer of Hebrews also tells us that "Faith is the assurance (substance) of things hoped for, the conviction (evidence) of things not seen."  There is no need for faith where there is not a desire for things not realized yet. Look at that another way and you could go so far as to say that deep longing for what we have not experienced yet is the essence of faith. And that longing is centered around the person of Christ.

I Corinthians 13:12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
I John 3:2 Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. (Hallelujah!)

There is no doubt that there is a precedent for this idea. I know that not a day goes by when something does not remind me that this is not my true home and that my family is not complete here.
Our relationship with the Divine informs our human, earthly experience (or it should). Which brings us back to our original question.
Can you miss someone you've never met?

With every beat of my heart.