I had an interesting conversation with a young person yesterday where we talked about life, life’s experiences, music, lots more, and matters of faith.
A particular thought was about this journey of life, the highs and lows of it, the sometimes feeling you’ve headed in the wrong direction, made bad choices and how you recognise the impact that has on shaping who you are/become. This led to musing on God. Does, how, and where He plays a part; thinking about whether there is a ‘straight path’ we are intended to follow, and the frustration there can be when we seem not too; wondering if God ever has enough of the ‘straying’…
So it was with interest that I read part of the following quote referenced on someone’s facebook page this afternoon (good old facebook :-)). I was drawn by what it said, so sort out the fuller quote. Food for thought, I thought.
What matters supremely, therefore, is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it – the fact that HE knows me. I am graven on the palms of His hands. I am never out of His mind. All my knowledge of Him depends on His sustained initiative in knowing me. I know Him because He first knew me, and continues to know me. He knows me as a friend, One who loves me; and there is no moment when His eye is off me, or His attention distracted from me, and no moment, therefore when His care falters.
This is momentous knowledge. There is unspeakable comfort – the sort of comfort that energizes, be it said, not enervates – in knowing that God is constantly taking knowledge of me in love and watching over me for my good. There is tremendous relief in knowing that His love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion Him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench His determination to bless me.
There is, certainly, great cause for humility in the thought that He sees all the twisted things about me that my fellow humans do not see (and I am glad!), and that He sees more corruption in me than that which I see in myself (which, in all conscience, is enough). There is, however, equally great incentive to worship and love God in the thought that, for some unfathomable reason, He wants me as His friend, and desires to be my friend, and has given His Son to die for me in order to realize this purpose. We cannot work these thoughts out here, but merely to mention them is enough to show how much it means to know not merely that we know God, but that He knows us.
– J.I. Packer (Taken from ‘Knowing God’ )