I needed this psalm this week. Hope everyone’s ok with me getting personal for a minute. I’m writing this in Montana from the kitchen of my future in-laws after a long day of travel yesterday. Over the past few months I’ve been working more hours than ever in my life on top of wedding planning, house shopping, and praying for healing for my fiancée’s cancer (as so many of you have faithfully joined in with us on that journey). It’s been a season of ups and downs that has required more of me than any other time in my life. I imagine others of us could say the same of their lives recently or at least can identify with the sentiment. I’ve recently found myself prone to an almost hopeless form of anxiety – not that I’ve forgotten the gospel, but that some stresses and “what if” questions seem bigger than God, outside of his control, etc. However asinine that thought is, it’s been my functional belief, even if I’d ultimately claim otherwise.
Enter Psalm 139 into this picture. I believe the promises claimed by the psalmist here are things that individual believers likewise may claim for themselves…I’m reminded that he has intimately made me and intimately knows me (vv. 13-14). He knows my thoughts even before I have them (v. 4). He knows all I will experience, do, become, etc. for every single moment of my life (v.16). Not only is he with me, but I couldn’t get away from him if it tried! (vv. 7-10)
Lately, I’ve been prone to express the sentiments of v. 11, “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,…’”. Yet I’ve needed the clarity of v. 12: “even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.”
Is anyone else prone to thinking in worst case scenarios? If so, I hope you’ll find the same comfort I found in these two verses specifically. If I should worry about the worst of the worst happening to me, I’m reminder that even if it does, my God will be there with me and is stronger than whatever darkness I might face.
Chaz recently called Psalm 79 “the psalm we need right now.” From a corporate perspective, I’d have to agree. Perhaps alongside it, I can submit Psalm 139 as the psalm we need right now as individuals. As you read it this week and pray, I believe the Lord will impress upon your hearts something very specific to your individual needs. At least, that is how the Lord has used it in my life recently. And I believe it’s a text that he will use in a multiplicity of ways for us this week, perhaps with no two of us impacted in quite the same way.
God’s grace and mercy be with you this week, brothers and sisters. May we be reminded that all our days have already been written by our God who deeply loves us and works all things for our good.
- Travis Pry