One of the hardest things about a new community is suddenly no longer being known. No one knows about your famous chocolate chip cookies or your gift for teaching.  

Sometimes in a cross-cultural context we become known for other things: the woman with the blond children or the woman who tried to order 12 eggs instead of the usual 10 or 15. Maybe with time we become known as the woman who offers cookies to the kids or the woman who prays for anyone who has a need. And while these characteristics help open a door for us to love our neighbors, they don’t capture all of who we are.  

We desire to be fully known – all of our quirks and fears, all of our shiny and charming and interesting parts – and yet to be known requires time and investment and vulnerability.  

This kind of investment can be even more difficult across cultures, across languages, and in contexts where our community changes as people come in and out – short-termers, furlough, visa rejections, health challenges. Over and over, we try to share who we are and hope to be loved. 

As we muddle through the work of human relationships, we can be encouraged that God knows us even better than we know ourselves. We see ourselves through a tainted lens – tainted by shame, tainted by lies, tainted by pride. God sees us as we really are – the lovely parts, the selfish parts, the strong parts, the weak parts. 

Psalm 139:1-4 “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 afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.”

And He loves us. 

1 John 4:10 “This is love: it is not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son as the sacrifice that deals with our sins.”

The good shepherd knows us by name (John 10:3). 

We are fully known and fully loved.