In this world the majority is important.  The individual is not.  Since 1970 your name was not asked for any longer in our public service who usually asks, “Your registration number, please?”  This makes everything easier, but sometimes you get the feeling of getting lost in the crowd as a “registration number” only.  And yet in God´s world it´s the other way round.  With Him the individual counts, meaning you as an individual.  To Him nobody is lost in the crowd.

This was hard for a young man to understand in London.  We met in the crowd one night, started talking to one another, and I assured him of God´s loving interest in him as an individual person.  It didn´t make sense to that gentleman. Should God really be interested in poor him  among so many millions?

This is what the gospel is about however.  “For God so loved the world….”  Yes, his love includes everybody, but when I teach the children that Bible word (John 3:16), I always emphasize to them that “the world” means you, and so they´re taught to put their own name right there where they read “the world” and also where it says “whoever”.  To a child that does make sense.  I´m afraid it has become a trite thing to us as adults.  But it´s not to God.  Nor to the individual who “humbles himself as a little child”.  Nor to Paul who testified of his simple,  childlike faith “in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. (Gal. 2:20).

You are not a drop in the ocean.  You are you.  Known by God as an individual.  And the lonely cross of Calvary stood there for you in your loneliness which no crowd and no majority can hide from God.  The God of the individual.  The God of the individual lost sinner for whom Christ died.

-jn-

Oct. 10, 2009