Throughout my thirty-seven years of being a Christian, I’ve read the through the Bible many times and yet it’s incredible how I can always learn something new when I read familiar passages again.
Take, for instance, Psalm 139 written by King David. This speaks of how well God knows us. Not just all of mankind, but me personally. Now, I’ve read this many times before but it truly is difficult to fathom. This lovely bit of poetic speech reveals the Lord knows when I sit, stand, where I go during the day, what I’m doing and when I lay down to sleep. He is “acquainted with all my ways”, and continually knows and is interested in my most secret thoughts; even those that are silly, superfluous and are of no redeeming value whatsoever, like what I’m planning to have for dinner and whose turn it is to walk the dog.
It goes on to teach me that He knows exactly what I’m going to say, even before it trips off my tongue. Oh boy. That’s pretty inconvenient, isn’t it? I’ll bet He’s thinking, “No, no, no, for heaven’s sake, don’t say that!” But then I go ahead and spout off whatever I’m thinking and like an embarrassed father, I can just see Him smack His forehead and roll His eyes in frustration.
Psalm 139:5 (ESV) states, “You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me”. He surrounds me with His presence and attention continually. To try to grasp this concept really is too wonderful for me to comprehend with my limited human understanding. He literally knows me better than I know myself. I can’t keep up with or make sense of all my thoughts, much less make sound judgments about myself and my activities like He does.
One of the biggest questions I’ll have for God when I meet Him face to face is, “Why would you bother? You could be out creating whole new panoramas of galaxies and black holes or, better yet, eradicating all the mosquitoes on the Earth, but you take your time to keep up with me? Huh? Down to even knowing the number of hairs on my head!”
It literally staggers me when I try to wrap my mind around that idea. That God Almighty, Creator, Lord of Heaven and Earth would take notice of little ‘ol me, much less genuinely desire and take the time to know me so intimately. He must be quite the multitasker!
So, for all those times when life seems too much to handle and I start feeling overwhelmed and sorry for myself.; when I’m not able to accomplish anything productive all day and I can’t find a decent parking place and the wheel on my grocery cart is totally out of alignment, I’ll have to stop and remember that God is literally walking right beside me. Through the frozen foods. And He’s probably snickering about the floppy cart wheel too. Truly appreciating that His presence is reality and that he genuinely wants to be with ME really does make it much easier to face the day.
