Psalm 139: 1-18
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 the light around me become night’,
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
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.
Reflection
This beautiful poem lays bare the intimate relationship between God and the believer. One of the themes of Scripture is that God works through people. God called Abram to travel to a land he didn’t know. When God commissioned Jeremiah, he tells him, ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you…’ (Jer 1:5). Even foreign potentates like Cyrus who have no idea who God is are subject to his anointing (Is 45:1).
There is a paradox at the heart of Christian spirituality. It feels sometimes that we are the initiators of the journey of faith. After all, we choose to go to church, or take a retreat. But at other times, often when looking back, we have an overwhelming sense like the Psalmist, that God is the one who has sought us out, called us and opened doors of discipleship for us. Reformed Christians have always taken that sense of God as the initiator with great seriousness. In Reformed thought there have been many theological approaches to the primacy of God’s activity and grace – all of them grappling with that central mystery. They range from the idea that God chooses both those who will be saved and those who will be ‘damned’ (which is surely an ethical outrage!) to the thought that in Jesus Christ God says ‘Yes’ to the whole human enterprise, and to all individuals (which runs the risk of equating St Francis and Hitler!)
Truly here we are dealing with a mystery – one to which Scripture bears ample witness, and which reverberates throughout the history of Christian thought. God is working his purposes out, and he calls a people – Israel – and individuals like Jeremiah and Mary and Paul to be an essential part of that work of salvation. It is that, not the theologies which attempt to explain it, which should delight our hearts.
Prayer
Gracious God
as we review our lives
we see the golden thread of your love
weaving through our decisions and deliberations.
We thought it was us,
so gentle and gracious was your footfall,
yet truly you were there.
We praise you that you know us
better than we know ourselves,
and that we were created to be your sons and daughters.
Guide us we pray in the ways of Jesus,
until your kingdom comes and your will is done.
Amen