psalm 139: never cease to wonder - 32nd week Monday 2017

We have met this psalm, psalm 139, many times over, and yet its wisdom is inexhaustible, it continues to teach us. 

The psalmist is moved by God’s knowledge of him – his past, his present, his thoughts, his ways, and even, his still hidden future.  The word knowledge in scriptures is not just intellectual learning or understanding but intimacy and communion.  God knows us through and through, a knowledge that begun when God already lovingly gazed upon us while we were yet an embryo in our mother’s womb.  

And what was the psalmist’s reaction about this depth of God’s knowledge of him, how did the psalmist react to God’s knowledge about him?  The psalmist said, “Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know the whole of it.  Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; too lofty for me to attain.”  The greatness of what God knows about me amazes me and fills me with wonder, it is too lofty even for me.

When you look at the mirror, can you recover again the wonder that is right before your eyes.  We may have become quite old, so used to seeing ourselves, and so we may have already taken ourselves for granted thinking there’s nothing to be amazed about ourselves anymore, thinking that we already know everything in our persons. If you are no longer amazed then at least repeat what the psalmist said, you know me Lord- too wonderful for me your knowledge, too high, beyond my reach.

Before we start class this morning, can we look at your students for a moment and just pause for a while and ask God, what Lord do you know about these kids in front of me?  And then repeat silently, "too wonderful for me your knowledge, too high, beyond my reach."

 Never cease to wonder, never cease to be in awe with yourself and with your students.