Excerpt from Psalm 139

"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."
 
Reflection by Quinn G. Caldwell

This is my mother's favorite Psalm.  For her, the idea of a God this all-knowing is a source of supreme comfort.  To me growing up, it was mostly just creepy.  In my teenage mind, it all felt a little too much like God the Stalker, peeping at me through the windows and doing drive-bys of my house.  Or maybe God as Big Brother, monitoring my library records and digging through the trash cans to see what kind of stuff I bought.  I wanted my privacy—even from God.

These days, I'm less convinced that privacy is such a great virtue, at least where God's concerned.  And I am very convinced that God's ways are not our ways.  What's creepy and dangerous in humans or governments is a very good thing in a deity.  I tend to think (sometimes, anyway) that if the people around me knew everything there is to know about me, I wouldn't be very popular.  But the biblical witness is that God does know all of it, everything, all my habits and deeds, every ugliness and act of beauty I have ever performed—and loves me anyway, completely and fiercely.  These days, that feels a lot less like creepiness and a lot more like grace.

Turns out Mom was right again.

Prayer

Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts.  See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.  Amen.

About the Author Quinn G. Caldwell is Associate Minister of Old South Church in Boston, Massachusetts, and co-editor, with Curtis J. Preston, of the just-published Unofficial Handbook of the United Church of Christ.

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