"God never began to love us . . . . We have always

Psalm 139 is "one of the chief glories of the Psalter," according to the Interpreter's Bible. Another commentator summed up the significance of Psalm 139 by writing, "this Psalm marks the culmination of Old Testament teaching about God, while expressing the most exalted view of the worth and dignity of [humanity]." (Charles Taylor, LET THE PSALMS SPEAK, p. 72) By any and all accounts it is a very personal prayer born out of the psalmist's inner experience of the profound truth of God's abiding presence and grace. And it is blissfully devoid of philosophical speculation, nationalistic ideology and sectarian dogma.

This beautiful prayer begins with a most unusual statement; "O God, you have searched me an known me." More often we think of ourselves as searching after God. Like St. Francis we believe that it is better to understand than to be understood. Here at the beginning of Psalm 139 the roles are reversed. God has searched for us, found us and knows us. We can relax now, for we are already known and understood. We live, move and have our being in the center of a Sacred Love that knows when we sit down and when we rise up, that discerns our thoughts, our purpose, our deepest desire from far away, searches out our path and is acquainted with all our ways.

God know us completely. We are seen as we are. There is a deep intimacy here between us and God. The Divine Love sees into the very heart of us and recognizes our true nature. What is our true or inherent nature? What does the mind of God see in us? The Psalmist doesn't speculate too much about this, though a little later on in the psalm we will find a general answer to this question. For now it is enough to sink deeply into the awareness that we are known and understood so completely that it blows us away! (Figuratively, of course.) In the midst of this awareness, the Psalmist continues to reflect upon the abiding presence of God.

There is no place that God is not. There is no person who does not in some way incarnate the Divine. Even darkness shines light when one is aware of the abiding presence of God. What might it be like to enter into the darkness and find it filled with light?

Carl Jung said, "Bidden or unbidden, God is present." There is nothing we need to do to bring about or manufacture the presence of God; it is already and eternally here. We can not avoid it or evade it.

In his book, RETURNING TO THE SOURCE, author and mystic Wilson Van Dusen told about an experience he had one day after giving a talk in church. The class was over and the crowd had almost all dispersed when an elderly woman, whom he described as being, "not long for this world," came up to him and recounted a dream she had had in which she saw a bright, golden sun come to her. She asked Van Dusen if this was God. As he thought about his response his first impulse was to give the standard reply about how dreams need to explored in depth and then they could see what this represented, etc. But something struck him about the woman, her situation and how it seemed to matter so much to her that before she died she should have met God at least once in her lifetime. Van Dusen said to her simply, "Yes, it was God." Then they looked into each others eyes and cried.

Whatever your image or understanding of God is, you meet God every day. In fact, there is never a time or a place in which you are not meeting God. There is never a moment or a situation in which the Love that lies at the heart of the universe is not intimately present with us. We are always connected to that sacred center.

The Psalmist continues to meditate upon the God who knew us even before we knew ourselves.

The Hebrew word for inward parts is literally, the kidneys. They were considered to be the seat of the emotions. This word is more commonly translated as heart, for that is how we refer to this inner realm of feelings today. The Psalmist is affirming the goodness of, and the Divine creation of, our capacity to feel. God's creation is good, wonderful in fact, and we are a part of that creation and of that goodness. Here we discover that whatever our true or inherent nature is, it most certainly is good and wonderful! This is something that the mind of God has known and celebrated since before we were born.

Julian of Norwich wrote, "God never began to love us . . . . We have always been . . . known and loved without beginning." And, I would add, without end.

Here we come to the end of the Psalmist's meditation. There are a few verses left to go, but scholars believe that they do not belong to Psalm 139 as it was originally composed. So at the end we are left with the simple yet profound affirmation, "I am still with you." Oh that every prayer and meditation might start and end with that!

I have often heard it said that we leave this world the same way we came into it: alone. Now I realize how completely incorrect that is. We are never alone. There is always and everywhere a Loving Presence accompanying us for indeed it is a part of our very being and a deep and abiding connection with all of life. This isn't just something that the Psalmist believed, it's something that he or she deeply experienced.

David Richo expresses it in the following poem:

Something,

We know not what,

Is always and everywhere

Lovingly at work,

We know not how,

To make the world more than it is now,

To make us more than we are yet.

That something is at once

Divine Spirit, life force of the universe,

And our own unique aliveness:

One Sacred Heart

Never apart.

Amen.

O God, 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, Yahweh,

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 awesomely 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.