The Lord paid attention

"Then those who feared the LORD spoke with one another. The LORD paid attention and heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared the LORD and esteemed his name" (Malachi 3:16).

What does the Lord pay attention to? Well, of course, He sees everything:

"No creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account" (Hebrews 4:13).

But some people God pays attention to more than others. At least, He watches them up close and personal. It would be like you at a public playground, seeing all the other children peripherally, but your own child like a hawk.

"For though the LORD is high, he regards the lowly. But the haughty he knows from afar" (Psalm 138:6).

I don't want to be known from afar. I don't want to be the kid at the playground God looks right through to find his own kid. I want it to be like this between God and me:

"O LORD, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways" (Psalm 139:1-3).

I love the verse from Malachi. It seems to be a summary statement of all that God expects and esteems in us. What will be the contents of his "book of remembrance"? What will be the only things God thinks worth remembering out of this whole messy world? The answer Malachi suggests is "those who feared the LORD and esteemed his name."

A woman at a retreat once told me about a man her mother told her about who worked in a mill in Massachusetts. Talk can get pretty colorful in a mill. (I have worked in textile mills in Rhode Island.) This man was a floor sweeper, and whenever he overheard one of his co-workers taking the Lord's name in vain, he would quickly call out, "Praise his holy name!"

Isn't it funny? I'll bet nobody remembers a single word of years of gossip and plans and schemes and trash that was spoken in that mill. The only word that survives all these years later is what a floor sweeper said, and was either mocked for or ignored. Those precious words have been stored in God's book in remembrance. For "the LORD paid attention."

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