God You Know

It's not what you know; it's who you know. 

There's plenty of truth to that statement floating around in our world. Some days, it can feel like we're stuck in a perpetual middle school with all of the ways that we try to divide ourselves - by color, class, gender, experience, education, economics, preferences, religion, whatever. If there's a way to draw a line and make a ladder, we'll do it - and then the folks at the top will make exceptions for the folks at the bottom based on all kinds of subjective criteria, namely, whether they like you or not. 

As an introvert, I will tell you that I owe plenty of opportunities and accomplishments in my life to extroverts who have adopted me and drawn me into places my quiet self would never get invited on my own. 

It pays to have friends.

But the greatest blessing is to be a friend of God. 

Because while we're here trying to figure out how to get to the top, how to climb the ladder, how to be noticed, how to be appreciated, how to move from one class to another, how to prove ourselves, how to be liked, God's out here already loving us and He treats every one of us exactly alike. 

In God, there is no male nor female, no slave nor free, no top nor bottom, no one with access and one trying to get in. In God, we're all the same - sinners saved by grace, broken loved by God, treasured just for who we are. 

Paul says it in his letter to the Ephesians - even masters are supposed to treat their slaves well because we're all slaves to God and in Him, "there is no favoritism" (6:9). In Him, there is no hierarchy. In Him, there is no desperate clinging and trying to climb and laboring to hold on. 

Slave or master, husband or wife, child or parent, male or female, educated or uneducated, rich or poor, it doesn't matter - there is no favoritism. There's no special "in;" we're all already in. 

And it really takes the striving away. It really takes the pressure to perform away. It really changes how we approach life, faith, love, and all the things of this world. 

Which means, there really is truth in the statement we started with, but it's not the truth we think it is. It's not the truth that says we have to know someone in power who is willing to take pity on us and drag us up a rung or two. 

It's the truth that says we're already loved by Someone in power who showers us with grace and draws us nearer to Himself. 

And if that's Who you know, you are blessed indeed.