Daily Devotionals

'Every Day Light' with Selwyn Hughes

Devotional: February 10th

For Reading and Meditation:
     Genesis 16:1-16

What matters most - that I know God or that God knows me? I think in a sense the latter. For my knowledge of Him depends on His sustained initiative in knowing me. Just as the knowledge of His love for me causes the scales to fall from my eyes and turns the machinery of my soul in His direction, so my knowledge of how intimately He knows me does something similar. I am graven on the palms of His hands. I am never out of His thoughts. He knows me as a friend and there is not a single moment when His eye is not upon me. It was this that Hagar came to see when she was feeling utterly bereft and forgotten - that God saw her and knew everything there was to know about her. "I have now seen the One who sees me," she said. There is unspeakable comfort in knowing that God knows all about us. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor who was executed by the Nazis. During the days prior to his death the thing that brought him great solace was not so much that he knew God, but that God knew him. The poem he wrote in his prison cell entitled "Who am I?" ends with the words "who am I? O Lord Thou knowest I am thine." Knowing how much he was known by God brought him great comfort and consolation. He knew that whatever happened to him, it would not happen without God's knowledge.

Gracious and loving Lord, thank You for reminding me that my knowledge of You depends on Your knowledge of me. Your knowledge of me stirs my soul toward my knowing You. You initiate - I respond. Keep initiating, dear Lord. In Jesus' Name. Amen.