I have been reading the book Knowing God by J. I. Packer. It is a theology book about God and is rather deep...at least for me. (Please understand I am not the type to read such books regularly...especially to brag about the complex things I read...but I humbly admit I am only reading this book as I am fascinated in learning more about God.)

I often find myself reading paragraphs over and over again to soak in all the richness of the words as they help me grasp a new understanding of who God is. Much of the book is about how one can “know” God (hence the title), but the author made these few points about how much God knows us:

“What matters supremely, therefore, is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it – the fact that he knows me. I am graven on the palms of his hands. I am never out of his mind. All my knowledge of him depends on his sustained initiative in knowing me. I know him because he first knew me, and continues to know me. He knows me as a friend, one who loves me; and there is no moment when his eye is off me, or his attention distracted from me, and no moment, therefore when his care falters.

This is momentous knowledge. There is unspeakable comfort – the sort of comfort that energizes, be it said, not enervates – in knowing that God is constantly taking knowledge of me in love and watching over me for my good. There is tremendous relief in knowing that his love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench his determination to bless me.”

Did you catch all that?

Read it again. Take a deep breath. Let it soak in.

I just don’t know what captivates me the most. Maybe it is the fact I am never out of his mind.

Maybe it is the fact nothing I will ever do will “disillusion him about me” because he knows not only all my past failures but even the worst about me yet to happen...the terrible stuff I don’t even yet know.

Maybe it is simply he knows me as a friend and the God and Creator of this ever expanding universe...loves me.

Wow.