Will He know me?

"What matters supremely is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it—the fact that He knows me." — J. I. Packer


This idea took hold of me one day when as a 22-year-old furniture maker's apprentice in Edmonton, Alberta, my mind took a leave of absence as my body was doing the mindless job of sanding furniture tops on an old-fashioned belt sander. There I was, pushing the sanding table in and out with one hand, the other pulling down on the lever of a sanding shoe, trying to achieve a level surface on each piece.

I was thinking of how important it was to believe that Jesus would come back some day. Funny, though, because I was still not a believer, but rather a philosophic hanger-on to the New Age kind of spirituality that combines "belief" in Jesus with a grab bag of other "spiritual" concepts.

Why should it matter to me that Jesus would be coming back, if he were only one of many "saviors", as is currently being taught by people like Deepak Chopra? I think deep down my original Christian upbringing was pushing its way back into my consciousness. I was starting to see where New Age thought was leading, and it must have been unsettling the real me, the one that would live forever… or suffer the second death.

As I was pushing that sanding table in and out, my limbs automatically sensing the right amount of pressure to get the work done, my mind was drifting into the realm of pure thought.

I kept thinking, "He's really going to come back. He really is. What will happen to me then? Will He recognize me? Will He know me?"

Suddenly, in my mind's eye, I could see something like an image of Jesus above me, and a little behind me to my left, looking down at me with a serious but not angry stare, just looking at me very hard. Without moving my head for a closer look, something in me just said, "When You come back, will you know me? Will You recognize me?" Pausing for the answer, there was none. He just kept looking, almost sadly.

All this, you understand, in my mind's eye. I don't know how else to put it.

After a few seconds more, and something external to my thought roused me to physical action, and the chink in time closed. But that moment of kairós time, and that thought "Will He know me?" was the beginning of my conversion to Jesus Christ, which came about after two more years of struggle against the good testimony of others.

Brethren, keep witnessing!

"Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven."

Matthew 10:32-33 NIV