A friend emailed me this week and told me about a conversation her daughter had with her young son. Megan, the boy’s mother, was addressing some mail and decided to find out how much her young son understood. She asked her son, “Where do you live?” “At my new house,” he replied. She agreed that he was correct, and asked if he knew on what street he lived. “Palmer,” he said with a look of satisfaction. “Right!” his mom enthusiastically responded. Can you say, “1314 Palmer”? Then his mom asked, “What is your last name?” There was a pause, and then he blurted out, “Douglas! Brent Douglas!” “Well,” she said, “that is your first and middle name, but what is your LAST name?” There was another long pause. Finally he said, “Come Here! Brent Douglas Come Here!” Well. . . if he didn’t exactly know who he was, at least he knew where he should be.
“Who am I?” “What am I doing here?” “What should I be doing in life?” These are the questions that we should be taking seriously, for God wants us to know the answer. They are important. These are the questions the Psalmist was asking. They have to do with our personal identity — and our eternal destiny. How we answer those questions determines how we will live and order our lives.
Let’s look at this psalm, and the three major observations the psalmist makes about God. The first is: God knows us intimately. David wrote, “O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.” God is not impersonal to David. He is very personal — too personal, perhaps. He searches him and knows him perfectly. There is nothing hidden from the knowledge of God, so that there can be no excuses, justifications or fabrications. This is an important truth to understand. There are those, I suppose, who think that because they have hidden something from others, they have hidden it from God. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Bible says, “Woe to those who go to great depths to hide their plans from the Lord, who do their work in darkness and think, ‘Who sees us? Who will know?’” (Isaiah 29:15-16).
David went on to say, “You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.” He knew that his every thought, as well as his every action, was known by God. David warned his son Solomon, as he was about to be anointed king of Israel, “And you, my son Solomon, acknowledge the God of your father, and serve him with wholehearted devotion and with a willing mind, for the Lord searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts” (1 Chronicles 28:9).
Everything David could think of was known by God. He said, “You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord.” God has perfect knowledge and he is everywhere at once. We often think of the vast expanse of the cosmos. We are told that there are one billion stars in one galaxy, and one billion galaxies in the universe. That God is not only aware of every star and planet, but is the Power which keeps each one operating is beyond our ability to understand. He knows each star by name. But what about the inner cosmos? Is not God also aware of every orbiting particle in every atom in each of our bodies? Is his mind not greater and his knowledge of us deeper than we can ever understand?
Dr. John Medina, genetic engineer, of the University of Washington helps us to understand a bit of the intricacies of the human body. He said, “The average human heart pumps over 1,000 gallons a day, over 55 million gallons in a lifetime. This is enough to fill 13 super tankers. It never sleeps, beating 2.5 billion times in a lifetime. The lungs contain 1,000 miles of capillaries. The process of exchanging oxygen for carbon dioxide is so complicated, that it is more difficult to exchange 02 for C02 than for a man shot out of a cannon to carve the Lord’s Prayer on the head of a pin as he passes by. DNA contains about 2,000 genes per chromosome — 1.8 meters [nearly 6 feet] of DNA are folded into each cell nucleus. A nucleus is 6 microns [one millionth of a meter] long. This is like putting 30 miles of fishing line into a cherry pit. And it isn’t simply stuffed in. It is folded in. If folded one way, the cell becomes a skin cell. If another way, a liver cell, and so forth. To write out the information in one cell would take 300 volumes, each volume 500 pages thick. The human body contains enough DNA that if it were stretched out, it would circle the sun 260 times. The body uses energy efficiently. If an average adult rides a bike for 1 hour at 10 mph, it uses the amount of energy contained in 3 ounces of carbohydrate. [So lay off the donuts.] If a car were this efficient with gasoline, it would get 900 miles to the gallon.”
We have a great Creator who has intricately made us and knows every part of us. But he not only knows our bodies, he knows the secret place of our minds. The Bible says, “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Hebrews 4:12-13). It is an awesome thought to realize that nothing I do or think is hidden from God. When I do the right thing, but do it from the wrong motive, he is aware of that. And I must give an account of my attitudes, my actions and reactions to him on the final day.
The second thing that David realizes is: There is no way we can get away from God. Sometimes the thought of God’s knowledge of every hidden thing I do or think is a bit overwhelming. I would like to get away from him and his all-seeing eye. I want my privacy. I want to shut the door a lock him out at times. But just when I think I am running away from him, I find myself running into him.
At the time this psalm was written, it was commonly assumed that there were many gods, and each one was confined to a particular locality. There were the gods of the hills and the gods of the plains. The God of Israel could not possibly exist in other countries — or so it was commonly thought. But David knew that even if he went to the farthest ends of the earth, he could not get away from God. He said, “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.” One man told of when he was a young boy, and his family decided to move. The night before they left, he went into his room and knelt down by the bed and said, “Good-bye God. We’re going to Montana.” He was sure that he was moving away from God, but when he arrived he found that God was there as well.
Sometimes when God gets too close you find yourself wanting to run away. This is what happened to the prophet Jonah. God had gotten too close for comfort, as far as Jonah was concerned, so he thought he would go on the run. God told him to go to Assyria, Israel’s enemy, and preach to them so they could be saved from his judgment. But Jonah wanted them dead, so he took off and boarded a ship to parts unknown. He knew that God was in Israel, but he did not think God lived in countries far from Israel. After all, they did not know him there and he was not worshiped there. He was the God of the Hebrews, but not the God of other nations. But God surprised him, and met him on the far side of the sea. Then he sent him even farther away to preach peace with God to a people that Jonah felt were beyond God’s grace and care. But God was not limited to Israel, or even planet earth.
I can still remember the first Russian cosmonaut going into space and coming back with the message back that they had looked all through space and did not find God anywhere. By way of contrast, one young airman of the Royal Canadian air Force, who was killed at age 19, wrote this poem about his early flying experience:
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
You have to be looking before you find something. Only those who ask are answered. Only those who seek find. And only those who knock find the door opened to them. God is everywhere, but you have to be looking for him to find him.
The third observation David makes is: There is no way we can hide from God. Well, if I can’t go far enough to get away from God, perhaps I can at least hide from him where I am. David wanted to hide from God, for he said: “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,’ even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you. For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” The darkness can’t hide me from God. I wasn’t even hidden from him when I was hidden in my mother’s womb. Even when my body as yet had no form, God saw me. He knows the beginning of my life and the ending. There are no secrets which are hidden from him.
It began to dawn on David that God’s knowledge of him was a good thing, not a bad thing. It was to his benefit that God was paying such special attention to him. He said, “How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you.” In the end, David invites God to know him even better, for he said, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” It finally dawned on him that God’s interest in him was not in order to find fault with him, but because of a heart that was full of perfect love for him. Jesus said, “And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid” (Matthew 10:30-31). God is always watching you, because he is crazy about you. He can’t keep his eyes off of you. The Bible says, “For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him” (2 Chronicles 16:9).
John Donne was an English cleric and poet of exceeding intellect who lived his adult life in the early 1600’s. King James I appointed him the dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. But in 1623 he became ill and felt he was dying of the plague, which was taking so many lives at that time. While convalescing, he wrote his book Devotions upon Emergent Occasions. It was a book about his struggle with death and human relationships. Interestingly, a Broadway play was written based on Donne’s works. Margaret Edson, a kindergarten teacher, received a Pulitzer Prize for the play she entitled Wit. Later on, HBO released a movie version of it, starring Emma Thompson. It is a moving film about Vivian Bearing, a literary scholar who specialized in the works of John Donne. Suddenly, however, she discovers that she, like Donne, is struggling with a life-threatening illness. The film is a personal journal of her struggle with cancer and death, and how she faces it with biting humor and amazing wit. In a very moving closing scene, she is visited by her old literature professor, Dr. E. M. Ashford. Dr. Ashford is on her way to her grandson’s birthday party, but stops by the hospital to see her former student. Vivian is in the throes of death, and in need of human warmth and compassion. Instead of remaining distant, her old professor takes off her shoes, laid down next to her in the bed and put her arms around her. She inquires if Vivian would like her to recite something, and asks if she would like to hear something from John Donne. Vivian shakes her head, “No.” So Dr. Ashford pulls from her bag a book she had bought for her grandson’s birthday. She starts to read from Margaret Wise Brown’s children’s book The Runaway Bunny. She begins reading softly, “Once there was a little bunny who wanted to run away. So he said to his mother, ‘I am running away.’ ‘If you run away,’ said his mother, ‘I will run after you. For you are my little bunny.’ ‘If you run after me,’ said the little bunny, ‘I will become a fish in a trout stream and I will swim away from you.’ ‘If you become a fish in a trout stream,’ said his mother, ‘I will become a fisherman and I will fish for you.’” Then, thinking out loud, Dr. Ashford says, “Look at that. A little allegory of the soul. No matter where it hides, God will find it. See, Vivian?”
The message in the philosophy of John Donne, the story of the runaway Bunny and the heart of the Bible are the same: “You just can’t get away from God.” If you run from him, he runs after you. If you run to him, he embraces you. But wherever you are, and wherever you go, his eyes of love will follow you.
Rodney J. Buchanan
November 10, 2002
Mulberry St. UMC
Mt. Vernon, OH
www.MulberryUMC.org
Rod.Buchanan@MulberryUMC.org
The God Who Knows Me
(Questions for November 10, 2002)
1. When you realize God knows everything about you, is it a comfortable or uncomfortable feeling? Have your feelings changed over time?
2. Why is God’s knowledge different from a clinging friend, a busybody or an overbearing person in your life?
3. Isn’t it amazing that God knows what you are going to say before you say it? How might this affect the way you talk?
4. Have you, or someone you knew, ever tried to run from God? How did it go?
5. Read verses 13-16. How do these verses affect the debate currently raging in the country concerning the rights of the unborn?
6. What finally brought David to the place where he could say in verse 17: “How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!”
7. Read verse 18. “When I awake, I am still with you,” may be an allusion to death and waking up in God’s presence. What will it be like for those who have tried to avoid God throughout their lives only to meet him in death?
8. How would you feel about making verses 23-24 your personal prayer?
9. How can you help others experience this truth?
