- Psalm 139 - read text online here »
- I Samuel 3:1-10 - read text online here »
We left out a step in our condo search. We did not take my mother-in-law to see the condo before we made the offer and it was accepted. We were disappointed when she was not as taken with the condo as we were for various reasons – [especially that we were so high on the 17th floor]. However, we still felt we had made the right decision. And we decided to put a doorway in between the smaller room and the bathroom to make it easier for her. This would be possible if this inside wall were not a main support wall and if it were not solid concrete. This idea [of a doorway] pleased her. It was an anxious time whether the condo people would let us do what we planned, if we could make it comfortable to please my mother-in-law and if my brother could do the necessary work.
In a dream one night, I received what was somehow identified as God's gracious message to me not to worry regarding all that was going on with the condo. The message: "I have it all figured out!" When my brother phoned the next day to tell me he had discovered the wall was solid cement, I remembered the message and did not panic. The message said God had it all figured out! So we decided to switch rooms, giving my mother-in-law the master bedroom with the bathroom a few steps away. But within a few weeks, after getting a walker on wheels, she decided she would rather have the smaller room closer to the living room. Now that she could get around better, getting to the bathroom in the middle of the night was not the same problem it had been in the beginning.There are those who think God isn’t concerned about such details as concrete walls or how far it is to the bathroom – that those things are for us to figure out by ourselves. Why would God be so interested in such seemingly minor details when clearly God has much larger issues to be concerned with – such as human misery associated with poverty, diseases, war, natural disasters, etc, etc.?
If Psalm 139 were not part of the biblical witness and if Marg and I had not sensed that God was in fact concerned with my mother’s reaction to her new living quarters and with our anxieties about her being comfortable, I might be tempted to agree with that sentiment. But we do have Psalm 139 as well as many other biblical examples that reveal God’s all-around detailed care and compassion for human beings.
Psalm 8: “What are human beings, that you think
of them; mere mortals, that you care for them?
Yet you made them inferior only to yourself;
you crowned them with glory and honour.”
Isaiah 41: “I am the LORD your God;
I strengthen you and say,
‘Do not be afraid; I will help you.’ ”
Jesus said: “And if God cares so wonderfully for wildflowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you.” [NLT, Matthew 6:30]
Jesus also said: “What is the price of five sparrows -- two copper coins? Yet God does not forget a single one of them. And the very hairs on your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are more valuable to God than a whole flock of sparrows.” [NLT, Luke 12:6-7]
And that take-charge disciple of Jesus, Peter the fisherman, wrote: “Cast all your cares -- all your worries -- upon God, because God cares for you!” [I Peter 5:7]
Perhaps Peter remembered David’s words in Psalm 55, part of today’s Scripture reading in Our Daily Bread: “Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you.” [verse 22, TNIV]Psalm 139 is a remarkably compelling poem written by King David. The psalm concentrates our thoughts on the reassuring and awe-inspiring character of God. Because of who God is -- because of God’s character – we can, with the utmost of personal trust, cast all our cares – all that we care about – into God’s gracious hands.
What does Psalm 139 tell us about God? Psalm 139 affirms how God knows each of us with profound intimacy [verses 1-6]. Nothing we do or say or think escapes God’s notice. “O God, you have searched me and known me!” David says in verse 1. In other words: “O Lord, you have seen inside my heart. There is nothing about me you don’t know.” The psalmist does not say this in fear, or as he cowers before a bully, or in anger that his privacy rights have been violated; rather, he says this, as we shall see, with great joy and with a sense of wonderful security.
God knows our every movement. “You know when I sit down and when I get up” the psalmist writes in verse 2. And when we get up in the morning and when we lie down at night, when we walk into our home and when we walk outside, whether we get into a car or bus or the subway, or get on a plane -- God knows it. God sees our every movement.
God knows our every motive. The Message Bible puts it this way: “I’m an open book to you; even from a distance, you know what I’m thinking” [verse. 2b]. The beauty here is the image of a close friend and companion who deeply understands our emotions and motives, the details of our routine and whereabouts all the while reading our thought processes. Remarkable!
God knows our every moment. Again in the way The Message Bible puts it: “I’m never out of your sight. You know everything I’m going to say before I start the first sentence. I look behind me and you’re there, then up ahead and you’re there, too -- your reassuring presence, coming and going. This is too much, too wonderful -- I can’t take it all in!”
The psalmist makes astounding claims as he pondered the character of God. He says we are never – never -- out of God’s sight! God knows our every movement, our every motive and every moment of our life. The psalmist responds with wonder, amazement and the profound understanding that God’s reassuring presence of knowing us with such intimacy is too deep for words -- it is beyond his understanding. It is so much and so wonderful for David he says he can’t take it all in! Pause with me for a moment. We are in the presence of an awe-inspiring and wonderfully caring God. [pause]
As the psalmist affirms the mystery that God knows him so personally, so intimately and so thoroughly, he is also intensely aware that God is with him constantly, even in the extremes of life. “Where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” he asks in verse 7. These are not questions of finding a way to escape from God; instead, they are rhetorical questions said for effect. Because he knows the answer to them already! There is nowhere either he or any of us can go where God is not already there. Hasn’t he just said he is never out of God’s sight? The psalmist is affirming that God is with us constantly even in all the extremes of life – in the ups and downs, the highs and lows, the joys and sorrows, the great celebrations and the worst tragedies. God is with us through everything.
For instance, God is with us even in death. “If I ascend to heaven, you are there. If I lie down in the grave, you are even there” [verse 8]. That God would be in “heaven” is not surprising. However, for the psalmist to say God is “in the world of the dead” (that’s the Good News Translation) is a remarkable statement of faith because many of his fellow Hebrews believed that “sheol” or the land of the dead was outside God’s jurisdiction. But as God revealed himself more clearly through the prophets and as the faith of Israel developed, many began to realize that to confess God as the Creator of heaven and earth, as King of kings and Lord of lords, is to recognize that no person, no experience and no place can lie outside God’s domain.
One of the Scriptures I often read at a funeral is from the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Christians in Rome. Listen to Romans 8:38-39 in the Good News Translation: “For I am certain that nothing can separate us from [God’s] love: neither death nor life, neither angels nor other heavenly rulers or powers, neither the present nor the future, neither the world above nor the world below -- there is nothing in all creation that will ever be able to separate us from the love of God which is ours through Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Link that thought with Jesus’ words in the Gospel of John, Chapter 14: “Do not be worried and upset,” Jesus told them. “Believe in God and believe also in me. There are many rooms in my Father’s house, and I am going to prepare a place for you. I would not tell you this if it were not so.”
There are some who wonder if there really is real, recognizable life after death. If there is not life after death, then these Scriptures – in fact, all of the Scripture -- makes little sense. It may make someone feel good to hear about God’s love at such a vulnerable time as a funeral. But I must admit I do not know what ultimate meaning there is if God’s love in Jesus Christ is meant only for this life but not for life with God after death. Jesus told us he is preparing a place for his people. God is with us even in death as the psalmist wrote -- and beyond death as Jesus stated clearly and often.
God is with us constantly. That also means distance is not an obstacle to God. “If I take wing with the dawn and alight at the sea’s farthest limits, there also your hand will be guiding me, your powerful hand holding me fast” [verses 9-10]. The essential meaning here is that God is with us “where the sun rises” and “where the sun sets.” In other words, God will lead us and help us no matter where we are. And God will “hold us fast” too. Isn’t that a wonderful thought!
Have you heard the joke about the man who wondered if he should start going to church? He decided to visit as many churches as he could around Canada. In his travels, he made an interesting discovery. In the entrance of every church he visited, there was a red phone with a sign that read “Phone Call to God.” In the churches of British Columbia, the sign read “Phone Call to God -- $20,000.” In the churches on the East Coast, he saw the same sign but the call was only $10,000. When he eventually visited a church in Toronto, the familiar red phone was there but the sign read “Phone Call to God -- $0.25.” More than a little confused, he asked the minister why the call was so much cheaper in Toronto than anywhere else in the country. The minister responded: “Son, you’re in Toronto now. It’s a local call!”
The truth is, distance is not an issue with God. Our prayers or calls to God are even free!
God is with us constantly. Even in our darkness, God is there, King David says. And when you read the psalms, you will see David experienced a lot of dark times in his life. Hear verses 11 and 12 in The Message Bible: “Then I said to myself, ‘Oh, he even sees me in the dark! At night I’m immersed in the light!’ It’s a fact: darkness isn’t dark to you; night and day, darkness and light, they’re all the same to you.”
Kenneth Wilson, in his book Have Faith Without Fear [Harper & Row, p. 54, 1970], told a story about when he was a child:
“That house in which we lived ... was three storeys high in the front and four in the back. The bottom layer was the cellar and the top was what we called the third floor, really a finished attic, the ceiling of which was cut into shadowed geometric shapes by dormer windows. Up there were two bedrooms, a hallway, and a mysterious storage room for trunks that always smelled of mothballs and history. Our family slept there because the second floor was usually rented out for a tenant to help pay the rent.”Because he was the youngest child, Wilson usually had to go to bed first, braving that floor of dark bedrooms. It felt like a long way up the steps, especially because there was no electricity above the second floor. A gas light had to be turned on, then turned off once he was settled.
[Wilson wrote:] “That bed in that room on the third floor seemed to be at the end of the earth, remote from human habitation, close to unexplained noises and dark secrets. At my urging, my father would try to stop the windows from rattling, wedging wooden matchsticks into the cracks. But they always rattled in spite of his efforts. Sometimes he would read me a story, but inevitably the time would come when he would turn out the light and shut the door, and I would hear his steps on the stairs, growing fainter and fainter. Then all would be quiet, except for the rattling windows and my cowering imagination.
“Once, I remember, my father said, ‘Would you rather I leave the light on and go downstairs, or turn the light out and stay with you for a while?’... [I chose] presence with darkness, over absence with light.”Even in the dark areas of our lives, God wants to reassure us that darkness is not dark to God. Night and day, darkness and light -- they are all the same to God. God still seeks us and God is with us no matter how dark it seems to us.
I said earlier that Psalm 139 is a remarkably compelling poem that concentrates our thoughts on the reassuring and awe-inspiring character of God. Because of who God is -- because God is all-knowing and everywhere present through his Spirit, because God is full of love and compassion for us as the psalms and all Scripture say again and again and again -- we can, with the utmost of personal trust, cast all our cares – all that we care about – into God’s gracious hands. And Psalm 139 also reminds us that God is our ultimate Creator. We are wonderfully made, says the psalmist. And so we praise God [verse 14].
It might seem surprising that the psalmist does not talk about the whole of creation in this psalm. He does not refer to the stars or the sun or the moon or the galaxies or even the universe as he does in many psalms. In this psalm, David refers only to the creation of the human body.
Saint Augustine once said: “People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars. And they pass by themselves without wondering.”
That is something to truly ponder! Did you ever think that more wondrous than the stars that fill the vast expanse of space, the sun that shines and warms the earth, the moon that lights the darkness, the lightning that strikes with power, the thunder that roars and makes us jump, the snow that falls soundlessly, or the ice that freezes and hardens – more wondrous than all this is what we can see in the mirror! And what we see in the mirror is what is most important to God!
Most of us are familiar with the Gallup Poll. Its founder George Gallup once said: “I could prove God statistically. Take the human body alone: the chance that all the functions of the individual human being would just happen [by chance] is a statistical monstrosity.” Whether we would agree with Gallup or not is one thing. But as the psalmist pondered the mystery of God’s creation of the human body, he also exclaims again in wonder and awe at his inability to understand God’s ways. Hear the awe in the way The Message Bible puts verses 17 and 18:
“Your thoughts -- how rare, how beautifulMy friends, don’t let a concrete wall or any other obstacles on the road of your life prevent you from responding to God’s compassionate care for you. God knows you intimately and thoroughly – more so than you know yourself! God is with you constantly, even in the extremes of your life. God has wonderfully made you. So if God pays such close attention to us, what would happen in our lives if we were to pay closer attention to God – if we listened attentively for God as we said in our call to worship – to the God of all creation who loves each of us so personally? Let us praise this breathtaking God. Wondrous are his works.
God, I’ll never comprehend them!
I couldn’t even begin to count them --
any more than I could count
the sand of the sea.
Oh, let me rise in the morning
and live always with you!”
May this be so for you and for me. Amen.
Rev. Chris Miller
September 5, 2010
OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto
Download a copy of this message at our drop.io
Visit with us online!
No comments:
Post a Comment