Not satisfied

Was really impacted by this quote this morning:

"Never be satisfied with what you knew about God yesterday."

So often I can just gloss over my time with God. You know, read a little from the Bible, pray, and get on with the day. Yeah, life is busy.

But I think when I do that, I'm missing the whole point of all those things. Am I just reading the Bible to say I read it? Or am I reading it to know more about God today?

I've been reading through John recently, and I read through Judas' betrayal and crucifixion today. Just a disclaimer in case you didn't realize this already, I can get excited about the craziest things sometimes. And as I was reading today, I saw something I'd never seen when reading the Gospels before (at least, I think I'd never seen it. With my memory, you never can tell). You remember the servant guy whose ear Peter chopped off with a sword in the Garden of Gethsemane? Well, I noticed today that he has a name!!!

Um yeah.... what's so special about that?

This guy was an accomplice to Jesus' death. Yeah, maybe he didn't quite know what was going on (John didn't include that particular detail), but he was still there, at least somewhat in the picture (otherwise, why would Peter have cut off his ear?).

And yet Jesus has compassion on this guy. He heals his ear. That in and of itself would have made me think twice about arresting Jesus. But not only does Jesus heal him, He makes sure that we have this guy's name written down. And now, when we read this passage, we can see that God cares about each and every one of us. He knows our names. He knows when we're hurting. He knows our life stories. He's not up there condemning us. He didn't do that with Malchus (that's the guy's name, by the way). We deserve death, but He chose instead to die in our place and to even go beyond that by healing us. He doesn't just heal physically, but also mentally, emotionally, and (most importantly) spiritually.

Those truths blow my mind. And I never want to get satisfied with that knowledge. I want to know more.