By David ReayThursday 23 Jan 2020LifeWords DevotionalsDevotionsReading Time: 2 minutes
O Lord, you have examined my heart
and know everything about me.
You know when I sit down or stand up.
You know my thoughts even when I’m far away.
You see me when I travel
and when I rest at home.
You know everything I do.
You know what I am going to say
even before I say it, Lord.
You go before me and follow me.
You place your hand of blessing on my head.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too great for me to understand! (NLT)
In 1944, a fire broke out in a circus in the USA. Many died as a result. In time, all bodies were identified except one: a young girl whose photo was circulated widely since she was not disfigured by burns. No one ever claimed her as their own. She became known as Little Miss Nobody. She remains an anonymous statistic.
No-one who has any grasp of the nature of God is a nobody. We are known to the very depths of our being. God knows us better than we know ourselves. Many others will never understand our ambiguities and mixed motivations. He will. Many others will just take us at face value. He won’t. Many others won’t even try to get to the heart of who we are. He does.
Of course this can seem threatening if we see God as some fearsome ‘Big Brother’ who detects our evil thoughts and uses them against us. True, his utter knowledge of us causes us to repeatedly examine our lives and not think we can fool him by merely looking good. But our God is not a terrible Big Brother but a gracious and merciful Heavenly Father. This same God who knows our dark recesses has offered pardon for them through Jesus his Son.
None of us is a nobody because God doesn’t make nobodies. To God, that ‘Little Miss Nobody’ was a somebody. To God, everybody is a somebody.
Blessings
David