It was 3 a.m. and I couldn’t sleep. I picked up a book and read this remark by a former Trappist abbot: “Saint Bernard talks about coming to the monastery to see God. But when we get here, that’s not what God lays on us. What he lays on us is self knowledge.”*  I stopped there, turned off the lights, and meditated on those words until I fell asleep.

One might think of the Christian life as a quest to find God, but it becomes a way of finding ourselves. That sounds nutty. We don’t have to find ourselves. We know ourselves. Or do we? I’m not so sure. In a sense we are always hiding ourselves from ourselves. It takes God to show us who we really are.

Psalm 139 speaks of God’s knowledge of us.

O LORD, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
You search out my path and my lying down,
and are acquainted with all my ways.

God knows us better than we know ourselves. It’s no surprise, then, that in seeking God we should find ourselves, our true selves. We find the parts that aren’t very pleasant to discover, but also the marvel of who we are as God’s child. As the Psalmist writes: “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.”

Seek God, find yourself, and then know God.

Read Psalm 139:1-14 and remember: God loves YOU unconditionally.

Wayne

*Frank Bianco, Lives of the Trappists Today, p. 99