Watching crickets and learning to know God

Let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.”  —Jeremiah 9:24

Imagine spending a summer on your stomach watching crickets in the wilds of Maine.

William Kotzwinkle did just that to research insect behavior for his children’s book, Trouble in Bugland. In an interview with Writer’s Digest, Kotzwinkle said he “spent an entire summer on my stomach, crawling around the slopes of the mountains here, where crickets like to be on warm days.”

Was it worth it?

“At the end of that long summer,” he said, “I hadn’t seen many, though I’d heard a lot of music.  Finally, one day I saw one coming out of his little cave.  There he was, making music, and I knew I was being rewarded by the cricket people for my vigilance and sincerity.”

Not only did Kotzwinkle watch a cricket concert, but he also spied a cricket fight.  A second cricket, attracted by the music of the first, emerged and the two engaged in a turf war.  The first cricket routed the intruder with a spray of noxious vapor.

The author reveled. “I am one of the few people on earth who has ever smelled that, because I had to spend three months on my stomach to even have a chance.”

Greater than crickets is knowing their creator

This is a man who can tout he knows crickets better than most of us. Jeremiah reminds us there is an even greater boast: We can know God, the creator of crickets, the maker of heaven and earth, the One whom to know is eternal life (John 17:3).

Isn’t it bold to claim we know and understand God, when we cannot even see Him? How can this be?

We might dismiss Jeremiah if he were the only one to say this, but he’s not.

• John wrote, “We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true” (1 John 5:20).
• Jesus taught, “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ” (John 17:3).
• Paul describes the decline of those who “knew God” yet “did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God” (Romans 1:21, 28).

We cannot discount witnesses who insist we can more than know about God; we may know Him by experience. A good example is Samuel. When he was young, Samuel heard God call him three times, yet the boy didn’t recognize the voice because “Samuel did not yet know the Lord” (1 Samuel 3:7).  The Hebrew elaborates, “Samuel had not yet experienced the Lord.” Once he knew that voice, Samuel wouldn’t mistake it again.

When God challenges us to boast that we know Him, He promises intimacy that goes beyond acquaintance—we become friends, even as Moses and Abraham were friends of God.

Isaiah foretold this when he said the Lord would give His servants another name (Isaiah 65:15) and Jesus fulfilled it, saying, “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15).

What a friend we have in Jesus, says the old hymn. God said we may know Him. Jesus makes it possible.

From knowing to understanding

But Jeremiah says there is more than knowing God, there is also understanding. In her book, Mastering Fiction Writing, novelist Kit Reed says this means “learning people from the inside…so you can begin to understand them.  Understanding, you will try to imagine what you would do if you were a particular person in a given situation.”

Understanding God, then, means knowing Him so well that we anticipate what He will do.  This is the theme of Charles Sheldon’s classic novel, In His Steps, where a pastor challenged his people to ask in any circumstance, “What would Jesus do?”  Before you answer, you have to know Jesus.  That is understanding.

So, this is the amazing boast God grants us: “Know me so well that you know who I am and you understand what I am like and how I act.”

Taking this to heart, the Apostle Paul exhorts us, “We make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him” (2 Corinthians 5:9). This is a goal only those who know the Lord can hope to achieve.

How do we know God?

William Kotzwinkle’s experience answers. He spent time—a lot of time—with crickets. Getting to know them took going to where they were, getting on their level, getting down on his stomach.  It took a summer of crawling among them, waiting, watching, and wondering.  It took desire and commitment, patience and discomfort.  It took forsaking others to know the ways of crickets like no one else.

And the crickets, he said, rewarded “my vigilance and sincerity.”

Likewise, the more time we spend with God, the better we know Him. This is what Jesus taught the disciples when He called The Twelve “so that they might be with him” (Mark 3:14). Being with Him, they could ask, “Lord, teach us to pray” or seek, like the psalmist, “Show me Your ways, O LORD; Teach me Your paths” (Psalm 25:4).

To know God takes nothing less than time in prayer, time in God’s word, time in God’s creation, time with God’s people and, sometimes, forsaking others to be alone with God.

Peter recounted the cost, “We have left everything and followed you” (Mark 10:28).

Is it worth it?

Those who know the Lord will be spared those dreadful words, “I never knew you; depart from Me” (Matthew 7:23) and hear instead, “Well done. Enter into the joy of your lord” (Matthew 25:23).

And we bear an aroma sweeter than the rare noxious vapor of a cricket war. “We are to God the fragrance of Christ” (2 Corinthians 2:15).