He knows you - by name!

We're not yet home but, as we are stopping in Maidstone, England for a couple of days with our good friends Harry and Ruth Loudon, I have access to the Internet :-) My thanks to the anonymous comment-leavers who have been missing me! Hope that they will appreciate this post!
It was the second-last Sunday of our holiday, and we were settled in a small town (large village!) named Soullans, in the Vendée region of France. One of the reasons for being there was that it is only about ten minutes’ drive from Le Pas Opton – the French Holiday centre organised by Spring Harvest. As we had done before, we went along for the family service and, while it was great to be able to praise and worship God in our native language, to be able to understand everything else that was said, and to share in the Lord’s Supper, my personal highlight was when some of the very young children were taking part. At the end of their “piece”, four little girls each read a prayer that she had composed. One of them finished with “Amen. By Gemma”. I doubt that I was the only adult who smiled! In fact, I suspect that Almighty God smiled as well!
However, I also realised that little Gemma had emphasised a wonderful Christian truth. She may have thought that it was necessary to inform the Lord as to who had been speaking – but He already knew! You see, we have the assurance that He knows each one of us by name - indeed, He knows us so intimately that we are even assured that the very hairs on our heads are numbered! That may be a lot easier for some than for others, but I wouldn’t want to have to count every individual hair, even of my rapidly vanishing locks!
It’s a tremendous thought – that the One Who created, and continues to sustain, the whole known universe (and all of the dimensions that are unknown to mankind), is so interested in me that He knows me like that. But what is even more amazing is that knowing me as He does – with all of my sinfulness, and guilt, and shame – He loves me. Indeed, He loves me enough to have entered those time/space dimensions that mankind does know, in the Persona of the Son (Jesus), and to have taken upon Himself all of that sin, and guilt, and shame as He hung on the cross at Calvary.
This is the heart of the Christian Gospel (the Good News), that God loved sinful humanity so very much, that He willingly paid the penalty of that sinfulness, in Himself; and that every individual who responds to that love, with repentance and in faith, may receive as a free gift, God’s own life within them. And that life is a life that reaches beyond the grave itself, into an eternal dimension that we can never hope to even begin to understand with our human, finite minds.
I trust that, as you read these words, you have already experienced that new life, in Christ. If not, then I commend it you. If I may be of more personal assistance, please feel free to contact me by leaving a comment.