"O
Lord, you have searched me and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all of my
ways.
Before a word is on my tongue, you know it completely, O Lord."
This psalm is a favourite of mine because it makes me feel secure in God's love - God knows me inside out with all my faults and shortcomings and yet he loves me. Verse 13 says "For you created my innermost being, you knit me together in my mother's womb." Verse 16 …"All the days ordained for me were written in you book before one of them came to be." How wonderful is that? God knows everything about us. He knows what we are going to say before we say it; he made us; all our days, however long or short our life may be, were planned even before we were born. Each one of us is special - created individually - not mass-produced like most thing nowadays!
Verses 8, 9 and 10 are, I think, my favourites: "If I go to the heavens, you are there; if I make a bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast." We can never be out of reach of God. His right hand will hold us fast. I like the picture of God holding us in the palm of his hand no matter what life throws at us. This message is reinforced in Romans 8, verse 37 - 39 where it tell us that nothing can separate us from the love of God - "neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future or any powers …". There is so much evil in the world and so much danger … and yet … God's right hand holds us fast. Although God is an almighty and awesome God, he allows us to call him Father and he cares for each of us individually. He hurts when we hurt; he rejoices when we rejoice. Because he is such a loving and caring creator, he must often be saddened when we push him to the back of our lives, not speaking to him in prayer as often as we should. When all is well with us and our lives are going according to plan (our plan!), we often take God's blessings for granted. However, when things go wrong, when trouble comes, we turn to God asking him to make things well again for us. If only we would remember to take our joys to God as well as our troubles, how joyful he would be!
Why not turn to your Bible and read over the whole of Psalm 139 and give thanks for God's special and unique love for you?
Comment by Elizabeth Crawford.