Psalm 139:1-18
1 O LORD, you have searched me and known me.
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
3 You search out my path and my lying down,
and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue,
O LORD, you know it completely.
5 You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is so high that I cannot attain it.
7 Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
9 If I take the wings of the morning
and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
10 even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me fast.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light around me become night,”
12 even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
13 For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16 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.
17 How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18 I try to count them — they are more than the sand;
I come to the end — I am still with you.
Prayer:
God, You see us wholly. You love us deeply. You know us intimately. You are with us when we are full of hope and enthusiasm, and you are with us when we are struggling to see a way forward. Help us to know that in faith and in doubt, in times of joy and in times of sorrow, we are yours all the same. Bring peace to the chaos we create. Bring your hope into our doubt. Bring the Holy Spirit into our lives. We pray for the world to be wrapped in your love, for the people and places dear to our hearts, and for the ones known only to yours. May the Artist who crafted us continue to shape our hearts, may the Christ who commissioned us, charge us with purpose, may the Spirit that stirs us, help us to carry the cross, that we may honor our Creator and bless the world. Amen.
Written by Chrissy Stevens (she/her/hers), Alumni, Schreiner University UKirk
and second year student at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary.
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