I’m doing French on Duolingo at the moment and alongside trying to remember how to spell keskersay* I’m struggling with the difference between savoir = to know and connaître = to know.**
Apparently, one is for information and one for people. It’s a handy distinction. We should have different words in English, too. Knowing a fact or a skill is not the same as knowing your best friend. It’s like the word ‘love’. Loving pizza and loving your kids are pretty different. For a start, one takes longer to cook … sorry. Scrub that.
And so to one of my favourite psalms. Also one of the scariest.
O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
You search out my path and my lying down,
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
O Lord, you know it completely.
This isn’t just knowing about me – blood group, shoe size, number of hairs on head – this is knowing the inside of me so well that God knows even the thoughts I hide from myself, my unspoken words, my very being. In the words of ‘Frozen’, God knows me so well he could finish my … sandwiches.
This isn’t first date ‘getting to know you’. This isn’t even that knowing each other well enough that you can fart without trying to make it silent. This is more like the death-bed confession of a Father Brown story. “Father, I have to tell someone; I have to get it off my chest.” And your confessor says “I already know, but I’m glad you told me.”
It is kinda scary being that known. I mean, if you, dear reader, knew me that well, you might not like me. Social media is great for sharing pics of our kids in their new school uniforms and cute things our pet dog gets up to, but it does rather bolster the illusion that everyone else’s life is picture perfect while we know our own lives are full of mess and junk and please don’t even look in the conservatory ‘cos I don’t think I’ve tidied up in there for best part of a decade.
And here’s me flailing about, getting all het up that I don’t even come up to my own standards let alone God’s, and I’m so judgy and impatient and nothing at all like 1 Cor 13 and … and … and …
And God puts a hand on my shoulder and says, “ Stop fretting, Fay. I already know, but I’m glad you told me.”
You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
If you find all this a bit gob-smacking, you’re not alone. The psalmist felt that way too, only he said it rather more poetically.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is so high that I cannot attain it.
How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
I try to count them—they are more than the sand.
But in the end, there is only one thing that matters. Like the master-criminal confessing to Father Brown, like the thief on the cross, like you and me and everyone, we will all one day leave this life and awake as if from a dream in the ultimate reality of God’s presence. For those who have clung to God, we have the assurance that never will he leave us, never will he forsake us.
I come to the end—I am still with you.
A wonderful fact to savoir and a wonderful God to connaître.
* Apparently, it’s qu’est-ce que c’est, which has to be the most cumbersome way of saying ‘what’s that?’ of any language. Literally, ‘what is that what that is.’
** I’m told that ‘Je sais jouer du piano,’ I know how to play the piano, but “Je connais Ed Sheeran.’ Although I don’t, of course. Neither of them.
Liturgy Resources for the 2nd Sunday after Epiphany
Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18
Confession and Absolution
Lord, you have searched me
and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
We confess that our thoughts have not always been pleasing to you.
Forgive us in your mercy.
Forgive us, good Lord.
Lord, you have searched me
and you know me.
Before a word is on my tongue, you know it completely.
We confess that our words have not always been pleasing to you.
Forgive us in your mercy.
Forgive us, good Lord.
Lord, you have searched me
and you know me.
You see my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.
We confess that our actions have not always been pleasing to you.
Forgive us in your mercy.
Forgive us, good Lord.
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
When I awake, I am still with you.
May God, whose mercy extends beyond the heavens
and whose generous acts outnumber the grains of sand,
pardon all who truly repent and remake us in his image,
that when we pass through this life and awaken in our true home in heaven
we may know God who is, always was, and will for ever be, with us.
Amen.
Blessing and Dismissal
May God both precede you and follow me;
May God’s arms encircle you on every side;
May God’s hand be on your shoulder and upon your head to bless you.
And the blessing of God …
Go in the presence of the one
who has written all your days in his book,
and who is with you to the end.
Amen.
The Reflectionary 