"to know, know, know You..."

"to know, 
know, know Him,
is to love, love, love Him;
and I do..."

 Sometimes, when I read the Psalm, "Be still, and I know that I am God," I hear Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris, and Dolly Parton's To Know Him is to Love Him," as the background music -- when it's not The Fray's "Be still, be still and know..."  Not all the lyrics, usually just those first few lines.

I love that the Psalmist encourages us to know God. For most of my life I confused knowing God, with thinking about God. But knowing is very different from thinking.

Webster's defines "knowing" as: 

"to have developed 
a relationship with (someone) 
through meeting 
and spending time with them; 
to be familiar or friendly with..." 

Thinking about God, is not the same as really knowing God.  Relationships require something more than just thinking about the one we love.  They require listening, the sacrifice of one's own self-certainties, exploring common ground, and spending time together in discovery.

In the context of this kind of knowing, it is incumbent upon us to make space for a relationship that isn't just cognitive, but experiential.  The Psalmist encourages us to discover how it actually feels to know God.  To allow ourselves to feel our oneness with divine Love.  To let ourselves experience the sweetness of carving out time each day for communion with our first love -- God.  To trust God -- a little more -- with each challenge.  

Jesus -- who, more than any other, gave us an example of what it means to be "in relationship" with God -- encourages this kind of knowing when he said:

"Ye shall know the Truth, 
and the Truth shall make you free."  

God is Truth.  So, if we know -- are in relationship with -- God, we are made free.  Free of fear, because we are in relationship with Someone who we know loves us, has all the power in the Universe, and is always present.  With that kind of a Father, why would be ever be afraid? 

We are free of the need to figure things out -- in hopes of avoiding the discomfort of feeling exposed and vulnerable to all the "what ifs" of human thinking.  For this is what the human mind does -- it thinks.  It thinks about things.  The human mind does not have the capacity to know.  Only to think about.  It remembers, imagines, speculates, and wonders about.  It is never really at peace.  It is always mulling things over, adding up pros and cons, figuring out a plan, imagining a strategy, wanting, wishing, worrying.

For me, knowing is a feeling.  It is the way a child feels when she is lying in the arms of Someone with whom there is no need for words.  It is the feeling of not needing to think about anything -- just feel.  In her "little book," Rudimental Divine Science, Mary Baker Eddy assures us:

"You must feel and know
that God alone governs man..." 

Not think about and then hopefully feel.  But feel and know.  the integration of the affection and intuition -- of Love and Mind.   To feel the love of God is to know the love of God.  Knowing is synonymous with feeling -- not thinking about.  And this feeling -- and knowing -- is a promise, not a suggestion.  She lovingly states that we must experience God in this way.

To know God is not an activity of the human mind, it is a feeling of the heart.  It is what we experience when we stop all the thinking, and discover that we are always being held in the arms of a loving parent who we know -- loves us beyond measure.

offered with Love,

Kate