Knowing Him

I was standing today in the dark toolshed. The sun was shining outside and through the crack at the top of the door there came a sunbeam. From where I stood that beam of light, with the specks of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in the place. Everything else was almost pitchblack. I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it.

Then I moved, so that the beam fell on my eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture vanished. I saw no toolshed, and (above all) no beam. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, 90 odd million miles away, the sun. Looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are very different experiences.

But this is only a very simple example of the difference between looking at and looking along. A young man meets a girl. The whole world looks different when he sees her. Her voice reminds him of something he has been trying to remember all his life, and ten minutes casual chat with her is more precious than all the favours that all other women in the world could grant. He is, as they say, "in love." Now comes a scientist and describes this young man's experience from the outside. For him it is all an affair of the young man's genes and a recognised biological stimulus. That is the difference between looking along the sexual impulse and looking at it.

The above paragraphs serve as the introduction to the essay Meditations in a Toolshed by C.S. Lewis. Paul Washer once preached an incredible sermon (dangerously incredible) in which he illustrated the difference between knowing Jesus and knowing of Jesus being similar to that of knowing the President and knowing of the President. I want to look at Jesus (Hebrews commands me to place my eyes on Him, to place them there and fix them there) and look at him as the young man in love, not merely as the scientist. Sometimes I think that our dried out textbooks and theological jargon robs us of the loveliness of Christ. By no means do I want to do away with getting to know of Him, but I want more than knowing of Him to really know Him.