Where can I flee from your presence? If I go 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. If I say "surely the darkness will hide me and the light becomes 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... Psalm 139:7-13
There is no part of us God does not intimately know. "All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." This includes the days of darkness where one imagines they cannot be found and even the days or circumstances that leave me searching for a pillow in the depths of the sea. Even that day, that circumstance was sifted by God's sovereignty and found to be for me. It's hard to understand. I often say, "these past 15 months have given me great cause to rest in and wrestle with the sovereignty of God."
Did you catch there is a "going" to the heavens and a "settling" in the depths in the first part of these verses? Wrong or right, sometimes making a bed in the depths with the weighted blanket of darkness and miles of sorrow above feels like our only option. Sometimes we are pressed to the depths with no energy to fight our way back to the surface. The pull of the darkness and the weight above us holds us there. I appreciate SO much how scripture frequently acknowledges such yet also reminds me the night is never so dark, the depths never so deep my Father cannot find me. In all actuality, there's no "finding" because he never lost me. His hand held and still holds me fast when I had/have no strength to hold on.
Who bids me out of the depths to rise with the dawn? Surely, not I. Even though I may break the surface and find myself on the far side of the horizon disoriented and gasping for air his hand guides me- even there. He will hold me through all the darkness, all the depths. When I settle and slumber fitfully or resignedly on the bed beneath the surface in the darkness of the deep He sees me still. He sits with me. He brings a certain light to the darkness. I will surely find "when I awake, I am still with you" (v18).
Why does he keep hold of the one among millions? He knows my every thought, every feeling, every motive, every word before its spoken (v 1-4). He knows every circumstance and everything about me which makes me-me. He made me. He even knows why I make my bed in the depths and what keeps me there. All that intimate knowledge would make any others flee, just ask anyone who's experienced the death of their child in this world. Yet he stays with his hand upon me (v5). His thoughts toward the one of millions- toward you, toward me, are loving and compassionate. They are the good and rapturous thoughts of a good and rapturous Father.
So, while the depths and the darkness stay.... so does my Father.
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