Being Known

The Romantic era, that time when artists began to see things like poetry and music as a sudden and overwhelming consummation of emotion stemming from an interaction with the sublime. Far different than systematic interpretation of those artists going before, the value of the inner sense of existence and reality, even in its most simplistic and rustic form was enough to be hailed as the new foundation for art.

I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit lately, mostly because I have this (as probably most do) love-hate relationship with emotions. Emotions allow one to experience the joys of life in a way that is unmatched by hard formed observations made apart from this influx of feelings. Yet at the same time, when life lacks this elation, possessing emotion means the pain and sorrow of the moment can be experienced at a level of excruciation.

Furthermore, emotions are extremely personal. The feelings you have or the passions that arise from witnessing a series of events can never be duplicated, nor can they be fully explained to another. I have to think, then, that we as human beings can never truly be known by others. Human relationships are funny things. They just are. For some reason, though, as Christians we are commanded by God to interact with people - of this I am convinced.

Scripture absolutely revolves around the message of the gospel, the promises of God, and how we should live in this world in light of that revelation. Many of our commands for living center on interaction with people. Hmm. Curious that God would command us as finite beings to engage humanity, whom we have no ability to ever truly know.

Only God will ever know me or you; because he is the creator; because he is God. In some sense, that realization seems lonely at first - to understand that those individuals I care about will never truly know me, nor I them. How much more exhilarating though, to think that there is a being so consuming that he understands me to my core, even when I don’t understand myself.

One of the things I hear many people struggle with here at college is the lack of deep relationships. Some have a hard time coming into a setting where people know little or nothing about them. We get caught up in conversations of “surfacy crap.” Last year definitely brought that struggle to me, and in many ways, it continues today.

Oh to be known. What a blessing and simultaneous agony. I sense that we as human beings have some innate desire to be known. Not even necessarily to be loved or liked, just known. Humans will never really be able to fulfill that desire for one another. What great incentive that is then to point people toward Christ, the knower of all things. This is a fairly lengthy passage from Psalm 139, but it’s worth the time it takes to digest…

“O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.

Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord.
You hem me in – behind and before;
You have laid your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
Too lofty for me to attain.

Where can I go from your spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there.
If I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.

If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,"
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.

For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
your eyes saw my unformed body.

All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.”

How inescapable. How comforting. How thrilling. How humbling.

I am known by God. That’s more than enough.