O Lord, You Search Me and You Know Me, Ps. 139

This psalm is a meditation on God’s omniscience and omnipresence. This knowledge and presence is not of a cold, distant God, but of a God intimately involved with all of creation, and with each one of us. It is an intimacy that is beyond even our wildest imaginations. Nothing in creation exists without God. Everything from the farthest ends of the universe to the smallest subatomic particle of the physical world has its existence in and through God. But it is the intimacy of God’s relationship with each one of us that the psalmist is attempting to contemplate here.

The psalmist is keenly aware of God’s all-knowing gaze, that God sees all our external actions, everything we do. He writes: “Lord,…you know when I sit and when I stand;…/ You sift through my travels and my rest;/ with all my ways you are familiar…Behind and before you encircle me/ and rest your hand upon me.” And he knows that he cannot flee from God’s presence or God’s gaze. “If I take the wings of dawn/ and dwell beyond the sea’s furthest end,/ even there your hand would lead me,/ your right hand would hold me fast.”

The psalmist knows that it was God who formed his innermost being in his mother’s womb, and that God knows his heart. It is this insightful awareness that leads him to recognize that God’s knowledge of him, and his presence with him, goes even deeper, that it sees into the very depths of his most secret places, his mind and his heart. He writes: “Even before a word is on my tongue, Lord, you know it all.” Our every thought, our every intention, is known by God, even before it becomes public in our words or in our deeds. And this is where we come face to face with God’s intimate love and mercy for us.

All that we conceive in the silence and the solitude of our minds, every willing, or willful intention, every good or bad thought or desire, is known by God long before it reaches our tongue, or is done. It is our conscience that makes us aware of this intimacy with God. When our thoughts and actions align with God’s wisdom and love, every form of God’s grace that is needed follows, generously and faithfully. When we defy God’s wisdom, our conscience burns with the knowledge that we have been seen by God, even if we were able to deceive others and ourselves. But this intimate God is patient. He waits. And before we can express our sorrow, before the first dim desire to turn back to him for forgiveness dawns upon our minds, he has already done so.

The more we learn about God’s loving presence, the more we may learn the wisdom of leaning into that loving presence, of willingly entering into that relationship through our prayer, both private and communal, and through our study of the scriptures. When we begin to do this, we can pray with the psalmist: “Probe me, God, know my heart;/ test me and know my thoughts./ See that I follow not the wrong path/ and lead me in the path of eternal life.” God knows us and is present to us always and everywhere. If we remember this in all that we think, say, and do, we will begin to take delight in God’s generous, loving, and graceful presence everywhere we are and in all that we do. In the words of Julien of Norwich, we will be able to say in all circumstances: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” Thanks be to God!