The Inescapable God

The Inescapable God To the leader. Of David. A Psalm.

 O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
    you discern my thoughts from far away.
 You search out my path and my lying down
    and are acquainted with all my ways.
 Even before a word is on my tongue,
    O Lord, you know it completely.

You hem me in, behind and before,
    and lay your hand upon me.
 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
    it is so high that I cannot attain it.

 Where can I go from your spirit?
    Or where can I flee from your presence?
 If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
    if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
 If I take the wings of the morning
    and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,

even there your hand shall lead me,
    and your right hand shall hold me fast.
 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
    and night wraps itself around me,”
 even the darkness is not dark to you;
    the night is as bright as the day,
    for darkness is as light to you.

 Psalm 139: 1-18 NRSVue

 After our Trenton United Church study group on the Psalms I decided to read the lectionary psalm offered for each day through the year. While my endeavour has been sporadic I've kept at it and I've found comfort in what has been a worship treasury for the Judeo/Christian tradition for the better part of three thousand years. 

The past three days it has been a portion of Psalm 139 which is familiar to many. There is actually a hymn setting in Voices United but I wonder if any congregation has ever sung it because of the unfamiliar tune.

 While some have attempted to co-opt Psalm 139 as an anti-abortion proof text (the verses below) it was never intended to be a statement about the moment of conception and viability as a human. It is an assurance that from beginning to end, night and day, in all the seasons of life, God is with us. This is wonderful poetry, not a scientfic treatise. 

I needed this psalm the past few days for a number of reasons. Sometimes life serves up a lot of turbulence, personal and global. The notion that God is "inescapable" is a promise rather than a threat. 

For it was you who formed my inward parts;

    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
    Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.
     

My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
    intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
 Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.

In your book were written
    all the days that were formed for me,
    when none of them as yet existed.

 How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
    How vast is the sum of them!
 I try to count them—they are more than the sand;
    I come to the end—I am still with you.