There’s a lot to write about: we’re finishing the psalms, it’s Advent Season, and there always observations about life like Spreading Joy about the smiling employee bussing tables and It’s Daily about a veteran NFL kicker completely missing the ball. But I don’t want to miss one of the best known and loved psalms: 139. I offer it without much comment. It’s hard to improve on the inspired text, which begins:

TO THE CHOIRMASTER. A PSALM OF DAVID.

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 afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it altogether. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it. (Psalm 139.Introduction, 1 – 6, ESV)

“Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it.” True. This is a hard concept to get hold of. God’s infinite and intimate knowledge of all of us as individuals. We can’t get away, we can’t hide!

Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you. (Psalm 139.7 – 12 ESV)

God’s detailed knowledge of me started in the womb?!

For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. (Psalm 139.13 – 16, ESV)

Compare the Apostle Paul’s observation:

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2.10, ESV)

David summarizes…

How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you. (Psalm 139.17, 18)

And concludes with a prayer:

Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting! (Psalm 139.23, 24, ESV)

Our God is infinite…and intimate:

For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite. (Isaiah 57.15, ESV)