God of One

If you have ever wondered whether God truly knows you, you need look no further than the Gospels to discover a resounding "yes!" 

As Jesus traveled through the region, teaching and preaching and healing, He was often pressed by the crowds. He was often surrounded by masses of persons. The disciples often commented that He didn't have time for them or He couldn't possibly have noticed them, as they did when they told the blind men to stop screaming from the sides of the roads and as they chastised Him for saying something so silly as "someone touched Me." He knew. They didn't. 

Jesus not only saw, but stopped for, every blind man. Every deaf man. Every lame man. Every child possessed by a demon. A bleeding woman (who should have been unclean, by the way). He recognized a man who had climbed a tree just to get a better look and called out to that man by name before anyone in the crowd even really noticed him. Jesus spent His ministry engaging the one. 

Perhaps the greatest example of this, though, comes in John 5. 

There is a man who has been waiting by a pool of healing waters for a very long time, but he never seems to get to the waters fast enough. Jesus comes by, sees the man, starts a conversation, and heals him. Then, John tells us, Jesus disappears into the crowd before the man even has a chance to thank Him. Jesus has again stopped for the one. 

But it doesn't end there. 

Later, we are told, Jesus saw this man in the temple and strikes up another conversation. You look well. See how much better you are now? Live into this. 

Jesus, who stopped in the middle of a crowd to heal a man the world had looked past for far too long, sees that man again later in the temple, recognizes him, and stops to talk again. 

He didn't just heal a man; He knew the man He had healed. He could pick him out of the masses. He could see him in all the places where he was "just" a face, just a number, where the world was still looking right past him. 

He does the same for us. 

Isn't it so cool for you to know that Jesus can pick you out of a crowd? That when He sees you across a room, He recognizes you? That He knows your story together, what He's done for you, how you believed in Him, without even having to think about it? 

Our Lord is the Lord of All, but He is also the God of One. Of you. Of me.

That's so cool.