Details

You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. – Psalm 139:1 & 3 (NIV) 

Details.   

They can be interesting. They can be boring. They can be disturbing. 

Most often, we’d rather deal with the finished product and be spared all the cumbersome details. The details of government raise too many eyebrows, the details of sausage making are repulsive, and the details of life seem easier to accept when they’re glossed over. 

Many of us take painstaking efforts to present the appropriate version of ourselves to the appropriate audiences at the appropriate times. Not everyone can relate to the totality of our complex personalities. Motown singer Smokey Robinson wondered how a person could be daylight and darkness at the same time.   

It’s been said that having someone who loves you is having someone who pays attention to the details of your life. We would be little more than faces in a crowd or statistics on a spreadsheet if it were not for those who look after us with care and specificity, and who get to know us personally and intimately.  

If loving someone is indeed paying attention to the details of that person’s life, we should take supreme delight in the love of God. All the bittersweet, idiosyncratic, nice-nasty, self-conflicted details that make us who we are… all those details are more evident to God than they are to us.   

Yet we are redeemed by grace, anointed to serve, endowed with heavenly treasure, and deemed more than conquerors, despite all the details that would disqualify us. 

Love so amazing can only be received gratefully and shared liberally with others. 

Prayer
Gracious God, in the words of Sly & the Family Stone, I want to thank you for letting me be myself again. Amen.

About the Author
Kenneth L. Samuel is Pastor of Victory for the World Church, Stone Mountain, Georgia.