To Love and Be Loved In Return.

It is not true that ‘to know someone is to love them;’ sometimes to know someone is to run screaming in the other direction as fast as your feet will carry you! It is true, however, that ‘to love someone is to know them,’ know them like the back of your hand, like a part of your own heart, like a well-worn pair of boots that slip smoothly on your feet ...for how could it be possible to love someone in ignorance? It’s not. We must know what we give our love to, otherwise we’re not really loving what, or whom, we think we’re loving.

Ever had a conversation with a family member, a friend, even someone you deeply and romantically love, only to come away with the realization that those who are supposed to know you best …sometimes don’t know you at all? There is an incredible yearning in the human heart, a core desire driving away at us, to know and be known— our hearts full and joyous with knowledge of another, our souls complete in some way, whole in some way, because of the intimate knowledge another possesses. This, I believe, is a divine desire: an illustration of what Solomon meant when he said, “He has ...set Eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end” {Eccl. 3:11b}.

I don’t think it’s a joyless resignation to say no matter how passionately we pursue this goal it will never be finally fulfilled in Time. In fact, in a fallen world full of fallen wills {Rom. 8:18-25}, it’s not even possible to have it fulfilled now. Not in the sense for which Abba intended it, not the way in which it will be when we stand before our King, our Hero, the Savior and Lover of our souls, and He peers into the very core of our being, past all the lies and hypocrisy, past all the posing and posturing, past all our jockeying for positions of prominence in His Kingdom, past the wounds, the weariness, the hurts and betrayals, past the long nights of loneliness and sunny days of short-lived bliss, past every moment we excluded Him from because ‘we had it all together’— locked down, buttoned up, retirement socked away, money in the mattress, another man or woman waiting in the wings to replace the one we’re with— past all the details and distractions which deceived us for decades on end, keeping us from laying our hearts in humility at his feet. Past all the rhetoric and straight to the reality of you …of me …of us.

Scripture paints for us this magnificent picture of a deeply relational reality to come in 1 Corinthians 13:12. The Apostle writes, “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now [‘At this moment,’ in this day, in this Age] I know in part; then [in the Eternity to come] I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” Mmmhhhhmm… that’s it. “I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” This what we’ve been searching for all our days. This is the fleeting shadow, the ever-elusive prey we’ve been trying to capture in every conversation, every fumbling attempt at friendship, every intimate encounter of our lives. This.

There is a moment in the Ages of Eternity when, “face to face” with the Lord of Glory, we will know Him as He has always known us. Try and grasp just for a moment the depth of intimacy and understanding being expressed here. A knowledge of God unlike anything you can possibly imagine in Time, and a ‘being known’ by God, by a kind and compassionate Presence, a strong and loving Other, a perfect and powerful Father. To “know fully, even as I am fully known.” And what we’ve looked for all our days, what we’ve longed for all our lives, hour after hour, hammering away at volume after volume of Scripture, theology, spirituality, ethics, the technicalities of Greek and Hebrew, devotional materials as rich as rainfall and doctrinal materials as dry as August dust, will finally be ours. A communion with our Creator beyond anything we can yet imagine, Eden come again, Paradise regained.

This is the world we were made for… this is the Life we were meant to live… this is our destiny, to be eternally surrendering ourselves to Perfection, endlessly submersing our wills in the Water of Life. This is who we’ll be and where we’ll be— forevermore. May you have a very, merry celebration of Jesus’ Incarnation.

Ric Webb, Shepherd
Heart's Journey Community
hjcommunity.org