cairns

I have written about this before, in fact I am writing and talking about it all the time now in various forms.  Blame it on the Who, “Freedom tastes of reality!”  This one simple Truth keeps speaking to me in various forms and continuing to set me free from bonds carefully tightened for half a century.  So, here I go again.

For years I have heard, and even used, the expression, “It’s who you know, not what you know,” as a criticism of power situations involving favoritism.  Most literally we have used it to refer to situations where the most qualified job applicants are unfairly passed over because the job is given to a person with an inside track.

Now, I realize (over and over in intoxicating joy) that it is in very real ways my Worldview as a Christian!  For so long I was taught, and taught others, that being a Christian was a matter of believing certain things and behaving in certain ways (by grace mind you ‘less any man should boast’ — but doing very specific things none the less).  Then, God kept showing up — as a woman living in a landfill in Mexico, a little boy with AIDS in Ethiopia, Christa students and staff (many times), a Hebron kindergartner, a presence beyond all words on a mountain at night in China, in once in a lifetime and in everyday situations…The One all of those lists and things were supposed to be about just keeps actually showing up in people who I have no reason to assume know my list of required thoughts or actions — keeps showing up in books by people who deny many of the things on my treasured lists.  God keeps showing up, smiling at my foolishness, and opening the loving arms to home.

And now I am ’sure, and very sure’ that what matters truly is Who I know, not what I know.  Scripture is very clear that the Divine already knows us and seeks us out so that we might know as well until that day when we finally “know as we are known.”

And, it is not ‘knowing’ the right things about the Divine. It is waking up to the reality that you have met and come to know the Divine that already knows and loves you.  I know Who holds my hope, my life, my joy, my future, my (frustrating lately) health, my family, and my friends.  I know who holds everything because they made everything and love everything they created.

And, I know that I Am loves all of us.

We used to say it, but we didn’t mean it.  We really meant that the Creator, Sustainer, Finisher WANTED to love everybody if they would give up on being unlovable by being different from us (of course we always phrased it like ‘give up their life of sin’) and allow Him not to kill them forever.  It just is not what I now find the Bible, or the One I encounter, actually saying.  I know the One who already loved us before we existed with full knowledge of everything about us.  I know Who loves us.  That is all I need to know — not what, just Who.

And, tomorrow the Divine will show up yet again revealing to me how much more there is yet to learn because I do not yet fully comprehend how deep and wide is the Love.  Perhaps the Divine will come to me as you.

peace

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