Searching...on a Snow Day (Psalm 139)

Today was a snow day... my wife and I drove through the beauty of blowing snow to get to 20th & Beech to worship with the church and celebrate Communion. I was prepared to continue our series from Colossians but felt let to make use of a football term and call an audible. 

As you can tell from my previous post, I am what I call a "New Years Agnostic" because I doubt the effectiveness of resolutions to change our hearts, much less the neighborhood and the world. However, I am a strong advocate for a "new birth" in Christ who sets us free from bondage to sin (be it rebellion, mistake, or weakness). 

Perhaps prompted by the weather, we couldn’t help but read the Lord’s appeal from Isaiah 2:16-20,

Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
    remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes;
cease to do evil,
    learn to do good;
seek justice,
    correct oppression;
bring justice to the fatherless,
    plead the widow's cause.

“Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord:
though your sins are like scarlet,
    they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red like crimson,
    they shall become like wool.
If you are willing and obedient,
    you shall eat the good of the land;
but if you refuse and rebel,
    you shall be eaten by the sword;
    for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

This was not so much an appeal to individuals to make a New Years-type resolution, but a call to wholehearted repentance for the entire community. Personally, and collectively we know we have failed to do the things outlined in the first paragraph. Thankfully the Lord doesn’t leave us there but offers forgiveness and healing if we will “trust and obey”.

We also walked through Psalm 139 as a way of focusing on our great God and how he relates to us. He not only knows everything, but he knows everything about us. He is not only everywhere, but he is with us. We should think of him all the time, but even if we did he thinks of us more. 

The following is a short meditation on the beginning and ending of Psalm 139 that was originally posted on the Psalms & More - Being Honest to God blog.  

Psalm for Today = 139:1-3, 23-24
¹ O Lord, you have searched me and known me!
² You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
    you discern my thoughts from afar.
³ You search out my path and my lying down
    and are acquainted with all my ways…
²³ Search me, O God, and know my heart!
    Try me and know my thoughts!
²⁴ And see if there be any grievous way in me,
    and lead me in the way everlasting!

Comments:

I love this psalm for its revelation of God’s omniscience (his all-knowing) and his omnipresence (his being everywhere). There is even one section that hints at his omnipotence (he is seen as the Creator). His knowledge and his presence are the repeated themes that bring such comfort. As I read this psalm again today I was pondering the beginning and the ending which share the same idea…searching me.

The psalmist is comforted by the fact that God has searched him and knows all there is to know about his habits, thoughts, and lifestyle and yet not only remains present in his life but is completely inescapable! 

After talking about the amazing knowledge of God he concludes the psalm by asking God to search him, test him, to see if there is “any grievous way in me”(v.24).

I don’t know if these two passages today cause you to ask some questions but they prompt me to ask, why would you ask God to search you if you have already said that he has already searched you? Isn’t it a redundant request?

It is one thing to acknowledge that God knows everything about you and another to invite him to keep searching and knowing everything about your life in order to keep you on the path to the Celestial City. I have been listening to Nate Currin’s new folk album Pilgrim based on Pilgrim’s Progress and perhaps that has helped to accentuate the journeying aspect of the life of faith for me today. The psalmist realizes that he has nor arrived yet, and therefore needs the continued guidance of the Lord. Keep me on your path Jesus!

It is important for us to not slip into a mindset of having arrived. When we think we have arrived we stop learning, stop seeking, stop growing in grace. Let’s rest in the knowledge that God knows all about us and yet loves us, and at the same time let’s actively invite the Holy Spirit to convict, instruct, guide, and comfort as only he can!

The conclusion above is true for us as a church and as a community. Sure God knows all about us, but will we ask him to keep searching us and showing us what needs to change? Will we repent of any "grievous ways" and follow in "the way everlasting"?

Jesus knocks on the door of the church (Rev. 3:20) and we want to let him in to every area of our life together. Come, let us eat together the bread and juice of true communion!