My favourite psalm is 139, which starts, ‘O Lord, you have searched me and know me. You know when I sit and when I rise.’ The psalm speaks about God’s omnipresence in the world, even in the life of the individual who wrote the psalm. ‘Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord’ suggests God even knows what is about to happen in the lives of every human being on this planet.
The psalm talks about God’s concern and care for us, ‘your right hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.’ Yet, with all the trouble we see in the world at present, perhaps exemplified by wars in the middle East and Ukraine, we might want to question God – ‘Why are you allowing these things to happen?’ But God allows us freewill and is simply there to pick up the pieces when the evil of one individual impinges on the lives of good people.
Actually, later in the psalm (and not normally quoted when the psalm is read in church) we read ‘If you would only slay the wicked, O God.’
Perhaps Mahatma Gandhi summed up the world situation when he said, ‘When I despair, I remember that all through history truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end they always fall…think of it, always’ At the end of the day, through their evil, the wicked slay themselves.
When you are feelings down or insignificant, read psalm 139 to give you reassurance that God is still there, knows everything about you, including your very thoughts, and wants to hold you by the hand and lovingly guide you through life.
God bless,
Tim and Norma