July 15 // Psalm 139

Opening Prayer

Search me, O God, and know my heart;
    test me and know my thoughts.
See if there is any wicked way in me,
    and lead me in the way everlasting.

Psalm 139

O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
    you discern my thoughts from far away.
You search out my path and my lying down,
    and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
    O Lord, you know it completely.
You hem me in, behind and before,
    and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
    it is so high that I cannot attain it.

Where can I go from your spirit?
    Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
    if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
If I take the wings of the morning
    and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
    and your right hand shall hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
    and the light around me become night,”
even the darkness is not dark to you;
    the night is as bright as the day,
    for darkness is as light to you.

For it was you who formed my inward parts;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
    Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.
    My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
    intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
    all the days that were formed for me,
    when none of them as yet existed.
How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
    How vast is the sum of them!
I try to count them—they are more than the sand;
    I come to the end—I am still with you.

O that you would kill the wicked, O God,
    and that the bloodthirsty would depart from me—
those who speak of you maliciously,
    and lift themselves up against you for evil!
Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?
    And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
I hate them with perfect hatred;
    I count them my enemies.
Search me, O God, and know my heart;
    test me and know my thoughts.
See if there is any wicked way in me,
    and lead me in the way everlasting.

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Misunderstood

Psalm 139 is among the most beloved passages in scripture in our day. We all know why — the passages speak for themselves. 

O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
    you discern my thoughts from far away.

In a world so large, it’s beyond incredible to hear that God has singled out each of us. That he knows each of us, and loves each of us. 

You search out my path and my lying down,
    and are acquainted with all my ways.

For a people whose lives are so dynamic, rocketing between sin and obedience with every passing moment, the news that God continues to search us out no matter how high or low we go is the Gospel truth we could never have expected (or deserved) to hear. 

Even before a word is on my tongue,
    O Lord, you know it completely.
You hem me in, behind and before,
    and lay your hand upon me.

The knowledge that God knit us together, in our beauty and imperfection, lead the broken, tired, made-of-dust person to an ontological shift. We are not only dust. We are beloved to the Most High.

If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
    if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
If I take the wings of the morning
    and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
    and your right hand shall hold me fast.

I love those passages too, and I receive their message as readily and as deeply as anyone. But the psalm as a whole is misunderstood.
We don’t take the whole message home with us because we’ve stopped reading the whole thing. We get “nothing but the truth” just fine. Now, let’s work on “the whole truth”.

O that you would kill the wicked, O God,
    and that the bloodthirsty would depart from me—
those who speak of you maliciously,
    and lift themselves up against you for evil!
Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?
    And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
I hate them with perfect hatred;
    I count them my enemies.

St. Teresa of Avila developed an approach to prayer grounded in contemplation, or meditation. In her prayer, she waited, alone, in silence, for God to speak. In her book, “The Interior Castle”, she describes the rooms she would travel through in her own soul: how she found walls and doors and windows, animated by her own life and lit by the Spirit of God. The longer and more deeply she traveled, the more surprised she was to still find God there, waiting, in the deepest mansion in the brightest room.

My summary doesn’t do her justice. St. Teresa wrote a tome about her meditative pilgrimages, and what it showed her about God and herself. Come with me a little further, though. Imagine trying this in your own prayer closet.

After you calm down and quiet the incessant chatter of your mind, you realize the Spirit of God is with you. From there, in the quiet, you look at your life. Every bit of it. Not just the salvation story you carry with you; not only your most winning traits; not the success of your career, or the lives of your children; not only your faithfulness to your spouse. Everything. God sees your deceit, lust, envy, avoidance, and selfishness. Everything.  

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
    it is so high that I cannot attain it.

The verses in Psalm 139 that we skip are about righteous anger, and hating what God hates. Those feelings seem at odds with most of the way we’re taught to live our lives. The sheer violence of the phrase, “O, that you would kill the wicked, O God!” strikes a dissonant chord.

Here is what we misunderstand about the Psalm. The first eighteen verses are intimately connected with the four verses at we skip (19-22). No one put them there accidentally. Psalm 139 is a giant If-Then, a logic puzzle sorting out a moral quandary: IF God knows me so intimately, and if he connected all of my inward parts, and if he taught me how to love what is right, THEN this anger I feel toward the wicked must be righteous, right? 

Search me, O God, and know my heart;
    test me and know my thoughts.
See if there is any wicked way in me,
    and lead me in the way everlasting.

IF the Psalmist’s anger is righteous, THEN of course, when we searches us, he will find no evil. 

If it is not righteous anger, ask the Lord to transform it. If it is righteous anger, beware! God might be calling you to act on it.

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Closing Prayer

O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you, and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, on God, now and forever. Amen.