Thursday, January 14, 2021
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 see me when I travel and when I rest
at home. You know everything I do. You know what I am going to say even
before I say it, Lord. You
go before me and follow me. You place
your hand of blessing on my head. Such
knowledge is too wonderful for me, too great for me to understand!
You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. 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. How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered! I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand! And when I wake up, you are still with me! Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18
It’s easy to feel insignificant in this universe. It occurred to me that may be one reason those who feign atheism do so…overwhelmed with the immensity of the cosmos, one cannot imagine God thinking of a single creature as consequential. It’s like whistling in the dark to ignore-away the bad things that can happen. A professing atheist feels alone and therefore without purpose or reason for existing.
We whistle (or scream) against the night of our
fear.
And yet, for those like the Psalmist, who choose
to acknowledge God as Sovereign Creator and sustainer of life, the terror of
being alone is dissipated, evaporating like a morning mist…and in its stead there
is a wonderful dawning of, not just significance or purpose to this existence, but
an unfolding and undeniable sense of being loved; of belonging.
In my youth the prospect of staking it all on
trust that a god I could not see would deign to love one like me, small and
insignificant…well, it was more than I could bear to face. So, I hid in the security blanket of
agnosticism, a denial that anyone can know the truth about where we come from,
and therefore, without definitive understanding about meaning or purpose, I could
not be blamed for bumbling around about God.
In time, I realized that would not do; it was much like a stay of
execution for a man on death row, or a baby sucking on a pacifier – it passed
the time but did nothing for the sense that time would eventually run out on
ignoring God.
And then God once again spoke through the Psalmist
to my childish excuses:
When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers—the moon and the stars you set in place—what are mere mortals that you should think about them, human beings that you should care for them? Yet you made them only a little lower than God and crowned them with glory and honor. You gave them charge of everything you made, putting all things under their authority—the flocks and the herds and all the wild animals, the birds in the sky, the fish in the sea, and everything that swims the ocean currents. O Lord, our Lord, your majestic name fills the earth! Psalm 8:3-9
God spoke significance into my heart. He told me I was with consequence in His
eternal existence, crowned with a Godly glory and honor; I bore His image, and
I have purpose in His will and plans for everything created. I, the dust speck, born to a simple,
unremarkable family…was on His mind. Frankly,
the thought still leaves me breathless.
But I have discovered, in the passing of time, that, along with John
Wesley’s famous last words, that the best of all God is with us,
He is still with me.
For You Today
Faith, the journey upon which we all explore our relationship to
everything, is only possible when one takes the leap of moving forward…not
whistling – worshipping.
[1] Title Image: Courtesy of Pixabay.com Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©
Calvin and Hobbes
(cartoon) by Bill Watterson
For other posts on this text see Still There and The Doily
