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I was at a conference once where they asked a group of pastors to choose a superpower, and then create a costume and talk about why we chose that superpower. If you were there, what superpower would you choose?
The people at that conference chose things that would be very useful for pastors and anybody who leads a busy life:
- The ability to be multiple places at one time
- The ability to create time
- The ability to see in all directions at once
- The ability to know what everyone is thinking
- The ability to know the future
These are some of the abilities God has that are described in today’s scripture, Psalm 139. They have some fancy names:
- Omnipresent – to be everywhere at once
- Omniscient – to be all knowing
- Omnipotent – to be all powerful
God is omnipresent and omniscient and omnipotent, and these are the qualities of God that are being celebrated in our psalm for today, Psalm 139, but the psalm writer put this a much more personal and down-to-earth way.
O Lord, you have examined my heart
and know everything about me.
You know when I sit down or stand up.
You know my thoughts even when I’m far away.
You know what I am going to say
even before I say it, Lord.
I can never escape from your Spirit!
I can never get away from your presence!
If I go up to heaven, you are there;
if I go down to the grave, you are there.
(Ps 139:1-2,4,7-8)
God knows our every move and our every thought. God is inescapable. We are surrounded by God. There is no place where God is not. But how often do we notice?
Maybe we don’t want to notice sometimes. God’s constant presence can bring us comfort but it can also sound scary. Which way is it for you? Maybe different at different times?
It might depend on how you think of God.
When my dad was a teen-ager going through confirmation in the Presbyterian Church, he was required to memorize part of the Westminster Catechism. The first question is “What is the chief end of man?” and the answer was “to love and enjoy God forever!” But my dad said, instead, “to love and annoy God forever!”
It was a slip of the tongue, but the idea of God following us around and watching our every move could sound annoying. Even oppressive.
Proverbs 9:10 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
There are those who have taught people to be afraid of God as a way to control them, but the word fear in this case means that we have reverence for God and trust him. The amplified version of the Bible helps us see that:
The [reverent] fear of the Lord [that is, worshiping Him and regarding Him as truly awesome] is the beginning and the preeminent part of wisdom [its starting point and its essence], Prov. 9:10 AMP
The Hebrew word for fear, yirah, is also a word that means awe and wonder.[2] A rabbi describes yirah as “the fear that overcomes us when we suddenly find ourselves in possession of considerably more energy than we are used to, inhabiting a larger space than we are used to inhabiting. It is also the feeling we feel when we are on sacred ground.”[3]
Some have described their experience of God’s presence as being sometimes overwhelming. Whenever we have an experience of something greater than our understanding, we have that sense of awe that can be hard to describe.
Unfortunately sometimes people want to make us scared of God as a means of control.
I saw this in action at a big motorcycle rally in Galveston. A group from Westboro Baptist Church stood by one of the main entrances to the rally with those tall skinny cloth flags flying their message of hate: “God hates gays!” They were also yelling these words, and they were quite scary.
I can’t even imagine how they could take the good news that God loves the world so much that he sent his only son and turn that into a message of hate.
Psalm 139:13-14 says that God “…made all the delicate, inner parts of my body
and knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!
Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.”
We celebrate that God made us the way we are, so why do some people tell us we can’t be the way we are? One of our coloring pages today has a blank space for drawing a picture of yourself. What parts of yourself make you most thankful to God? We are all marvelous examples of God’s beautiful workmanship.
Some people think that this psalm was something David wrote while he was on the run and hiding from King Saul who wanted to kill him. As David was trying to get away from familiar places and find remote spots where Saul couldn’t find him, he may have needed the reassurance that even if Saul couldn’t find him, God was still watching over him and taking care of him.
If we’re not on the run, like David hiding among the rocks, maybe God’s presence is something we take for granite. I think we also underestimate God’s knowledge of the all the inner workings of our minds and bodies.
We talked a couple of weeks ago about Jesus’ call in the gospels for us to metanoia, a word that’s often translated as repent, but that literally means to change your mind. We also see in the gospels that Jesus demonstrated this turning to God through his regular practice of going off by himself to pray. Prayer is an essential practice for Christians that we inherited it from Judaism.
Our God who created us knows everything about us. God knows we need times of prayer to pause and let go and be centered in the present moment. This is essentially the meaning of Psalm 46:10 – Be still and know that I am God.
Over the past 20 years, magnetic resonance imagery has enabled researchers to see what happens to our brains when we practice contemplative prayer and meditation. Scientists used to think that after about three years old, the brain did not change, because pathways and synapses that weren’t used would atrophy and eventually die. But new studies are showing that brains can change, and one way they do is through a daily centering practice of taking time to pause and let go.[4]
This is a lot like what the apostle Paul tells us to do in Philippians 4:6 – Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.
It doesn’t always seem like prayer is working, but knowing that science has proven how it changes our brains for the better, we can recommit to spending time daily pausing and releasing our cares to God. The research shows that it strengthens the part of our brain that helps us keep from reacting with our fight or flight response. I’m not surprised, because I have noticed that people who spend more time in prayer have a kind of aura of peace about them.
That’s what Jesus told us to expect. In John 14, part of Jesus’ time with his disciples on the night he was arrested, he said:
“All who love me will do what I say. My Father will love them, and we will come and make our home with each of them. 24 Anyone who doesn’t love me will not obey me. And remember, my words are not my own. What I am telling you is from the Father who sent me. 25 I am telling you these things now while I am still with you. 26 But when the Father sends the Advocate as my representative—that is, the Holy Spirit—he will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I have told you.
27 “I am leaving you with a gift—peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give. So don’t be troubled or afraid.
God has given us this gift of peace, and also given us each different ways of seeing the world, interacting with the world, and dealing with our experiences. Some people write – this psalm is a lot like a journal entry might be. Some draw or paint. Some go hiking or walking or running or gardening or organizing. What helps you?
Some write songs. Alessia Cara’s song “Scars to Your Beautiful” was written in response to losing chunks of her hair when she was a young teenager. She says:
“It was one of the scariest things. It got to the point where it was visibly gone. I struggled with that a lot, especially going into high school. You have so many pressures – what people are going to think of you – and I was going into it losing all my hair. I had, like, nothing left. It was patches of missing hair that people would point out, because people are mean in high school.”
Her song helped her to accept what was happening to her, and she hoped it would also help others who feel like they aren’t good enough.[6] Here’s what the chorus says:
But there’s a hope that’s waiting for you in the dark
You should know you’re beautiful just the way you are
And you don’t have to change a thing, the world could change its heart
No scars to your beautiful, we’re stars and we’re beautiful
Indeed we are.
Thanks, God.
Let’s pray using the words of Psalm 139 New Living Translation
1 O Lord, you have examined my heart
and know everything about me.
2 You know when I sit down or stand up.
You know my thoughts even when I’m far away.
3 You see me when I travel
and when I rest at home.
You know everything I do.
4 You know what I am going to say
even before I say it, Lord.
5 You go before me and follow me.
You place your hand of blessing on my head.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too great for me to understand!
7 I can never escape from your Spirit!
I can never get away from your presence!
8 If I go up to heaven, you are there;
if I go down to the grave, you are there.
9 If I ride the wings of the morning,
if I dwell by the farthest oceans,
10 even there your hand will guide me,
and your strength will support me.
11 I could ask the darkness to hide me
and the light around me to become night—
12 but even in darkness I cannot hide from you.
To you the night shines as bright as day.
Darkness and light are the same to you.
13 You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body
and knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!
Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.
15 You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion,
as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.
16 You saw me before I was born.
Every day of my life was recorded in your book.
Every moment was laid out
before a single day had passed.
17 How precious are your thoughts about me, O God.
They cannot be numbered!
18 I can’t even count them;
they outnumber the grains of sand!
And when I wake up,
you are still with me!
Cover photo by Tim Foster on Unsplash
[1] Photo by Michelle Cassar on Unsplash
[2] https://firmisrael.org/learn/hebrew-meaning-of-yirah-what-connects-fear-and-awe/
[3] https://www.taramohr.com/dealing-with-fear/my-favorite-teaching-about-fear/#:~:text=There%20is%20a%20second%20Hebrew%20word%20for%20fear%2C%20yirah.
[4] Caroline Oakes, Practice the Pause: Jesus’ Contemplative Practice, New Brain Science, and What it Means to be Fully Human talks about studies that show that pause-release meditation builds pathways in the brain that help override the amygdala response by strengthening the insula. Her references include these articles:
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00212/full
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3004979/
[5] By Umusic – Umusic. This image was provided from Umusic. I received permission through email and also sent them a copy of a Creative Commons permission statement with instructions on where to send it., CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40892453
[6] https://www.songfacts.com/facts/alessia-cara/scars-to-your-beautiful#:~:text=The%20song%20was%20inspired%20by,where%20it%20was%20visibly%20gone.
United Presbyterian Church 