Knowing Even As We Are Known

It may be, once again, my own monotonously one-track mind at work. Yet there is a kind of plea - if not an outright complaint - that I find echoed again and again throughout Scripture. And from where I'm sitting, it goes something like this:

Turn again, O God of Hosts! Look down from heaven, and see; have regard for this vine, the stock that your right hand planted, and for the son whom you made strong for yourself. They have burned it with fire; they have cut it down; may they perish at the rebuke of your face! But let your hand be on the man of your right hand, the son of man whom you have made strong to yourself! THEN [emphasis mine] we shall not turn back from you; give us life, and we will call upon your name!                                                       

                                                                                     Psalm 80: 17-18 (ESV) 

In sum - as I read it - if only we could know the RIGHT person: the right priest or king (or queen), the right prophet, deliverer or savior, and then be around him or her often enough, to the point where their holiness, godliness, etc, could just rub off on us. 

Not an unreasonable wish, too, when you consider the actual way that Salvation unfolds, or works itself out, in the course of both Scripture and post-Scriptural history. In any situation, if not every story, there's nearly always someone - even if it be a "mere" Moses or David or Isaiah - whom we must first get to know, accept, even trust, before we can proceed further. 

Except, of course, that in mere human terms - far from anyone else rubbing off on us - we can barely even rub off on ourselves. Much less get inside of ourselves. Indeed, it's as if we were locked out - as if our most consciously volitional, eager, earnestly purposeful Self were powerless to get at precisely that core of us - that Soul in us - which is most God-needing, God-docile, God-pliant. 

In short, most of the time, even our most morally earnest and resolute Self is pretty useless at grasping the needs of our Soul. Much less meeting those needs. So that even the "best" that we are, even the very best we're capable of, is something we can only work ON ourselves, from the outside in. And even then we can only go so far, so deep. 

The point, of course, being that there's only One who can get really inside us, into our very depths, into the unselfconscious core of our innocence, so to speak - so as to transform us from the inside out. And that is because, being the Maker of ALL things, He is already there. In fact - blessedly for us - He has even gone the entire length of making Himself a Son of Man. And thereby a new, and flawless, Adam. Which means He's even closer.

(Edited.)