Fool’s Day

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.  In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.  Proverbs 3:5-6 NASB

Acknowledge – Let’s have some fun today.  We want to think about the Hebrew idea of knowing.  It’s not the same as our Western idea.  To get the picture, see if you can read this:

Let’s face it.  No one really knows everything about us.  Except God, of course.  But we don’t actually invite Him to know everything.  We pretend, for the sake of emotional protection, that there are some things no one should know, and it is just this tiny little alteration that prevents us from trusting God.  Oh, we can acknowledge that He knows, but that still insulates us from the intimacy He shares with us, and we won’t find that intimacy we so desperately desire until we are willing to invite Him to really know all that we know about who we are.  It sounds easy, doesn’t it?  But you and I both know it’s not.  Why?  Because it’s not a rational choice.  It’s an emotional one—and like most Greeks, emotions scare us to death.  Trust is a very frightening thing.  It is, however, essential for growth.  The Hebrew text confronts us, not with acknowledgement, but with the full force of yādaʿ, “know” in its most comprehensive sense.  “Know” like no one ever before has known you.  “Know” like your life depends on it, because it does.

In Hebrew, “to know” is mirror-image backwards—you don’t know anything until someone else knows you.  What the other person knows depends on how much you let the “mirror” reflect who you are.  It’s not that face in the mirror that matters.  It’s the person behind the mirror who counts.  In Hebrew, there is no “you” without the presence of another.  “Let us make Man in our image” isn’t just theological fodder for doctrinal debates.  It’s a statement about the fundamental and essential nature of being human—there must be an “us” before there can be a “you.”

Topical Index: trust, acknowledge, emotions, yādaʿ, Proverbs 3:5-6