Getting To Know Him
Saturday in the Fourth Week of Easter
My dear encountered couples:
The answer to Jesus question to Philip: No, they still did not know him. The apostles had been with Jesus a long time and they did not yet really know him. I wonder if they ever really got to know him before they died and rejoined him in eternity. If the disciples and apostles who lived with Christ day and night for months and years still had much to learn about him, where does that put our knowledge and understanding of Christ on the scale of one to ten? As much as we might know Christ, or think we know him, we are yet but babes in the woods. Don’t let that discourage you; let it spur you on to get to know him more and better.
No friendship is to remain at any fixed point. It is to proceed and grow from its first moment of birth to become an increasingly closer and more enlightening relationship. We all experience friends we thought we knew well surprising us with new revelations of themselves. We surprise ourselves. We find we are capable of both good things and bad that we didn’t know were in us. There is so much good in Christ that an eternity might not be long enough to get to know him. But not only Jesus, but also his Father who, let us not forget, is our Father. How well do we know God our Father? That seems to depend on how well we know Jesus Christ.
“If you really knew me,” Jesus told his disciples, “you would know my Father also. From this point on you know him; you have seen him.” “Lord,” said Philip, “show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” “Philip,’ Jesus replied, “after I have been with you all this time you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” Confused? Who isn’t! It just means we don’t yet know Jesus well enough. It will happen. Just give it a bit of eternal time.
