A few years ago. I spent a week in Qatar with two of my cousins, Rhoda & Jackie. It was a week of more laughter than I’d had in almost 4 years. – Some of it at pure nonsense!
Once home, I wondered why it was that I had laughed so much. It wasn’t that I didn’t laugh and have fun here, but it was different. Then it clicked, I was with people who knew knew me, and I them.
There is a power in truly being known by another person. Knowing that you don’t have to articulate everything in words. – A look or even silence will do.
Knowing that you can be you. No judgement. It is something you can be unaware of missing, until you have an experience of it.
Psalm 139:1-3 says, “O LORD, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways.” (ESV)
No-one knows us better than our Creator. He not only knows us, He loves us. All of us. Irrespective of gender, race, class and so on; or our current knowledge of Him.
1 John 4:17-18, God is love. Anyone who lives faithfully in love also lives faithfully in God, and God lives in him. This love is fulfilled with us, so that on the day of judgment we have confidence based on our identification with the Messiah* in this world. Love will never invoke fear. Perfect love expels fear, particularly the fear of punishment. The one who fears punishment has not been completed through love. (The Voice)
Known. Loved. I hope that you have some experience of this.
– And get to laugh like you haven’t done in a while!
*italics & word choice mine
**added content courtesy of someone who read the post: Known – song by Tauren Wells. Thanks Teman!