START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18
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OBSERVE:
This Psalm highlights the omniscience of God concerning the very conception, consciousness, and inner being of David, the Psalmist.
This is a first-person poem/prayer in which David marvels at the intimacy of God’s knowledge of an individual — every movement, thought, word is known even before they are enacted, thought, or spoken (verses 1-6).
The Psalmist is amazed and humbled by the capacity of God to search and know him, and deeply aware of just how transcendent God’s knowledge is of all things.
One can’t help but wonder if this Psalm doesn’t inform St. Paul’s understanding of the Spirit of God, which is described in The Epistle to the Romans as communicating directly with our own spirits:
The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God (Romans 8:16);
and in Romans 8:27:
He who searches the hearts knows what is on the Spirit’s mind, because he makes intercession for the saints according to God.
While some Psalms marvel at the created order of the stars and the mountains, and the revelation of the Law (Psalm 8 and 19, and 119 and so many others), this Psalm revels in the deeply personal nature of the relationship between God and the human being.
God’s omniscience extends even to the mysterious realities of life and death. God is described as having woven the Psalmist together in his mother’s womb, and knowing him when he was yet unborn. The Psalmist is profoundly aware of just how fearfully and wonderfully made is the human body. The mysteries of human anatomy and development in themselves are a testimony to the creative powers of God.
And the Psalmist suggests that God knows each of his days before they are lived, until even the day of death.
The Psalmist marvels that God’s thoughts are precious, vast and inscrutable.
APPLY:
Consideration of the omnipotence and omniscience of God can often leave us feeling insignificant. But this Psalm reminds us that the omniscience of God is really quite intimate. God knows us from our conception to our death, our interior thoughts and even those aspects of ourselves unknown to us.
Although God is transcendent and “wholly other” as the theologians are wont to say, God is also deeply immanent (present and pervasive) and personal in his knowledge of us. We puny, finite human beings are capable of knowing and being known by the Creator of all the universe!
St. Anselm of Canterbury once wrote:
God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived.
The Psalmist illustrates that this God, above whom there is nothing greater, knows us each intimately and personally. Although our knowledge of him is limited by our own finite capacity, the great blessing is that because he knows us we can know him.
RESPOND:
I am capable of having a personal and intimate relationship with God, not because of my capacity but because of God’s initiative. God has searched me and known my thoughts before they entered my mind, has known me from before my conception, and knows my potential and even my destiny. Like the Psalmist I find that all this boggles my mind!
And God’s unique relationship with us from conception, through gestation and birth, and from life to the moment of death, should make us aware of just how sacred life really is.
Our Lord, how can my words begin to match the prayer of the Psalmist? That you know me intimately and care for me exceeds my capacity to understand. All my life is lived in your omniscient omnipresence. Amen.
PHOTOS:
“Psalm 139 verse 14” is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license.
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