Know or Truly Known

I have had more time lately, as many of us have. I’ve noticed that I haven’t accomplished many of the things I thought I would have, having been given so much more personal time. Most of the stuff that I have set aside for a rainy day still sits untouched, and I’m not sure why. I’ve done a couple of things, but not many. Can I chalk it up to the loss of my emotional equilibrium? 

I have taken more time to walk and on these walks I pray. In fact, I find it hard to pray any other way. Can you relate? It’s not impossible, just harder for me to focus in a room by myself. Prayer walks, for some reason, just work for me. Occasionally, I mix it up with some music or the occasional podcast. Praying has been significant for me in this COVID-19 season, but it’s not just the act of praying; it’s the communion with God that is making the difference. 

As I was listening to a scripture podcast the other day, the narrator stopped at John 5:39-40 where Jesus addresses the Jewish leaders saying, “You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” The host pointed out how Jesus would rather we come to him than know “about” him. It is so much easier to learn about Jesus when you are in relationship with him. You can’t have a personal relationship with someone without having a personal connection. There is a significant difference between knowing about someone and knowing someone.  

If I knew everything about you but didn’t know you, would you know me? If I was able to convince everyone I knew that I knew you through my research of you and my imagination of what you were like, but I never met you - would you know me?  If I worked on causes close to your heart but never met you, or never spent time with you, would you know me? If I formed a group with others to discuss you but never invited you to be with us, would you know us?  Even if I were obsessed with convincing everyone, even myself, that I knew you - would you know me? The answer to every one of those questions is no. 

This truth is either disturbing or comforting, depending on where you are in regard to a relationship with Jesus. As crazy as this sounds, I started to ask myself, “am I more interested in convincing others (including myself) that I know Jesus or am I more interested in just knowing him intimately? Am I knowing him in a way that I am absolutely convinced that he knows me?” After all, the Jewish leaders who studied the Scriptures diligently would have benefited greatly by asking themselves that question. Instead they downright refused to see Jesus in the text. They were really good at projecting and communicating their knowledge of God, but it was a one-way, self serving knowledge; they knew about Jesus without knowing Jesus. Again, truly knowing him wasn’t missed, it was refused! 

I have had intimate times with Jesus where I believe we knew each other. However, I know my tendency is to wander and drift away from him. I’m really happy that during times of wandering he finds me. He has shown up to remind me that he is still interested in just being with me. He reminds me to let go of everything and just be with him. One of those times was my job loss at the end of 2002. This event dropped me to a low place, but somehow back to a more intimate place with him. I wish I didn’t need life-altering events like job changes, the loss of a loved one, or COVID-19 to reorient and reawaken me to my desperate need for a deeper walk with my Savior. But there is grace for me in my humanity. Christ knows that I am easily distracted, swayed, and preoccupied - despite this, he calls me back - it’s humbling and vulnerable to engage with a Savior who knows me fully and completely. I wrote the following words during that low time 18 years ago, they seem appropriate today for the ways that they capture my feelings of ungroundedness and the revelation of my need to step back and reconnect with Christ as my rock in seasons of unknown.  

Alone in a Crowd — September 30, 2002

Movement all around me, conversations swirling from every corner of the room.

I find myself talking, doing my part to drown out the silence with empty idle chatter.

I’m together with the others in the room, yet desperately alone.

I’ve never been so alone, alone within myself.

People around me, but not one is welcomed into my lonely inner world.

This is not of my choosing, for if it were up to me I would open the door in an instant.

Wide open, to invite any and all who would come in to push out my loneliness, my solitude, my pain, and my disappointment.

Come in and push it out, please won’t you come in.

Alas, I cannot invite them in because I am in a hidden place where others are not allowed. The inner me. A place that even I have avoided. My inner world. Others may walk by, pass by, and even peer in, yet no one is allowed in.

Nevertheless, I’m here now, within myself, trapped within the prison of my inner self. And now that I’m here I can only peer out at the outer world, the world where I spent most of my life.

Living within the swirling busyness that is exterior to me now, foreign to this private place where motions and movements are slow, ever so slow.

As I sit within myself, within this quiet place, he appears to me. He appears as a stranger (at first) who has broken in and made himself at home.

How is it that I did not recognize him? How did he, my Savior, become a stranger to me?

How long had I ignored him?

In spite of this, he came into my broken inner world like a ray of sun piercing through my cloud-filled life.

As I look up from the fortified walls I had built around me, I see him sitting with me.

He broke in and with him he brought hope, communion, and companionship.

I discover anew that he is all I need, that he was all I had ever needed, the fulfillment of all my desires, the eradicator of all my fears.

My inner world was always with me, yet I had ignored it right up to the point my outer world was breaking. A breaking which forced me to retreat within myself.

I never lived here before, not in this way; I never felt the need nor the requirement. Yet now there is nowhere else to go; nonetheless it is here where I found him, again.

This is where he resides. I am his temple. How could I not have been caring for it?

He is the spring of living water desiring to well up within me, to spring forth from me.

If only I could have been less consumed with and turned away sooner from the outer world.

If only I had sought him sooner, then perhaps I would not have been brought so low into this brokenness.

He has always been waiting for me. Longing for me. For a connection with me, a transformation of me to my true self. A self wrapped up in him.

I find myself longing for him to take control of my inner world to bring authenticity to my outer world.

A longing for him to save me from all the shallow outer world promises that have only left me empty and depleted.

A longing to move in concert with him and no longer seek fulfillment outside of him.

A longing for him and him alone.

For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. (Phil. 1:21)