The major league baseball All-star Game was played the other night. Baseball fan that I am, you might have thought I’d be glued to the television, watching the game. I wasn’t, though. Instead, I walked down to the park and watched some local kids play baseball and softball.
Given the length of the All-star Game, I did get home in time to see the last three innings. It’s a funny thing, though. I literally enjoyed watching the Gettysburg kids play ball more than I enjoyed watching the major league stars play.
I thought about why this would be, and a few reasons came to mind. The stars are all wealthy athletes playing for money; the local kids play for love of the game. I could sit outside on a beautiful evening to watch the local kids; I’d have been inside watching the TV to watch the all-stars. The All-star Game, for all it’s hype, is basically a glorified exhibition game; the kids are out there trying to win.
As I thought about it, though, I realized what the real reason is that I enjoyed the local kids more than the stars. The stars are people I don’t know. There was only one player from my team, the Twins’ Michael Cuddyer (I don’t really know him either, of course, but that’s another issue). Because of that, I really didn’t care whether the National League beat the American League.
On the other hand, even though I’ve been in town less than three weeks, there are at least a couple of kids on the Gettysburg team that I know. I know a few of their parents’ too. Because of that, I cared how they did, and I cared how their team did. I cared, because I knew them.
I think that’s a basic fact of life: we can’t care for people we don’t know. I’m not saying we’re totally indifferent to them—a lot of people gave very generously in the aftermath of the tsunami in Japan, for example—but those of us who don’t know anybody there do not and cannot have the same feeling about it that someone who actually knew people there would have. We need to know someone, or at least feel like we do, to truly care about them.
The Bible goes out of its way sometimes to tell us God knows each of us individually. We’re told that God knows when we get up and when we lie down. God knows when we go out and when we come in. God knows the number of hairs on our heads. God knows all there is to know about each one of us.
Some of us may take that for granted, but it’s an important thing for us to know. It’s possible to imagine a god who does not know us as individuals, a god who’s just the “god of the big picture”. Some people even believe in that kind of god. One thing the Bible makes clear, however, is that’s not the God we have. We have a God who knows each of separately and personally.
I think at least part of the reason the Bible makes that clear is that it’s a way of saying that God cares about each one of us personally. A “god of the big picture” would not care about us, because that god would not know us. The God we have does know us. Because God knows us, God cares about us. In fact, it goes beyond just caring about us; God loves us.
God does not love us because we’re all-stars. God loves us because we’re God’s children. God knows you, and because God knows you, God cares about you.
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