Knowing You

In a post about her Facebook “abstinence,” one of Lauren Carrion’s readers makes this comment: “I don’t understand how people can have 1000+ ‘friends.’ I think that really de-values the word friend.” It makes me want to go through my list of Facebook friends and do some “de-friending” – not because I dislike any of the people, but because – really now – how many peoples’ lives do I need to keep regular track of? That I have several hundred Facebook friends probably speaks more of some desire to be noticed than of me genuinely wanting to know and experience community with these individuals. (And, unless their security settings are through the roof, just because I “de-friend” someone doesn’t mean I can’t still send them a message sometime in the future if they happen to cross my mind.)

How many people can a person really know? Can you say that you deeply know a person’s likes and dislikes, values and goals for more than a dozen people? Or Five or six people? Maybe only one or two people?

I stand in awe of God: He knows everyone on planet Earth by name – every detail of our lives down to how many hairs are on our heads.  He knows you and what’s going on in your life just as He knows me and my life.  He never forgets my name.  He never loses track of where I am or what I’m up to.  In fact, the Creator of heaven and earth knows me better than my family knows me, better than my wife knows me, even better than I know myself.

The only thing more astonishing than the fact that God knows me is that I can know Him, too!  I don’t need to settle for knowing about God.  As a devotional last month reminded me, I am “given the greater privilege of knowing, really knowing God.”

In other words, I can be friends with my Creator.  Through Jesus, He wants “to friend” me – not virtually in cyberspace, but intimately in real life.  If I ever doubt it, I can reread the friendship language Jesus uses in John 15.  Through Jesus, God wants to be my friend in the complete, best sense of the word.

These are some of the things that were going through my mind as we sang “Knowing You” at the end of the Sunday’s service…

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