Henrietta United Church of Christ

Rev. David Inglis July 20, 2008

Psalm 139

”Here, There and Everywhere”

Until a few hundred years ago, people saw God everywhere. If there was a drought, God must be punishing them. When rain came to their parched land, God was blessing them. A rainbow was a sign of God’s promise. A comet was a heavenly sign of ominous changes. And even deeper than that, when people had their hands in the soil and their lungs filled with the smell of green and growing things, and had time to watch the sky and gaze at the stars, they felt surrounded by a deep, mysterious divine Presence that coursed through everything and coursed through them. Today’s psalm is an expression of that awe and gratitude for feeling God here, there and everywhere.

Then came “The Enlightenment,” and modern science, and we humans began to push back the sense of mystery and wonder that connected people spiritually to the world around them. Today, we’d never hear a weatherman say, “The barometric pressure is dropping and a high pressure system is moving east at about 20 mph, so our computer model shows a 80% chance that God is going to make it rain on HUCC’s pool party again unless their pastor humbly repents of all his sins. Rainbows are just sunlight refracted through the raindrops. Sunsets are just light rays being bent by the earth’s gravity. Ancient trees are just board feet of lumber. Mountains are just repositories of ore.

Today we have our hands on the computer keyboard, our lungs are filled with the smell of outgassing from the new carpeting, we don’t have to look at the sky because the Weather Channel tells us everything we need to know, and who has time to look at the stars, that are mostly hidden by air pollution and light pollution anyway? Where’s the mystery, other than where we put the TV remote this time. Where’s God, except in such expressions as, “O my God, how did it get over here?” Where’s the awe, except in such discoveries as, “You have two remotes for your TV? That’s an awesome idea!”

That’s why I love Psalm 139. And that’s why we need Psalm 139–to reconnect us to the awesome mystery that God is truly here, there and everywhere.

But how do we get there from here, knowing what we know about how the world works and having the power over it that we do?

Well, let’s start where the psalmist starts.

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....

Even before a word is on my tongue,

O Lord, you know it completely.

Whoa, wait a minute! Do we really want God in our lives this much–keeping track of our every move, reading our minds–our fantasies, our silent little rages, the little plots underneath our politeness? This isn’t just Big Brother; this is Big Daddy watching us to the max, with our soul’s eternal destiny on the line.

I recently got a very different perspective on God’s awareness of us from someone who telling me about her daughter, Emilia. When Emilia was three, the family was driving on an overpass over the Interstate during a bad snowstorm. Emilia said, “Look at all the angels!” “What angels, Honey?” her mom asked. “All those angels over the cars down there. Every time it snows, there’s angels over the cars.” “You know when I sit down and rise up.” I can’t explain that. Neither could Emilia’s mother, who said she hadn’t really talked about angels to Emilia. But maybe we don’t have to be afraid of the divine being aware of our every move. Maybe God’s not watching us to catch us doing something wrong, but to help us as we wend our way through this challenging life.

What about our thoughts, though? If God doesn’t have anything better to do than watch 6 billion channels of bad soap operas at the same time, maybe God needs to get a life!

Here’s my perspective on that. God expects us to be very human, with a jumble of motives and impulses and random thoughts tumbling around in our brains. That’s what our biological brain does.

But our minds and thoughts are capable of something else too. Have you ever felt so lost, hopeless or purposelessness in the tangle of your life that you turned to God and entrusted a situation or your whole life to a Wisdom and Power beyond your own? Doing that opened up a connection between your mind and God’s Mind so that your thoughts and actions could be oriented towards a higher purpose than your biological brain and fearful ego could come up with.

Have you ever read or heard or sung something that inspired you, opened you, filled you, and lifted you to a little higher level of thinking? Doing that allowed God’s mind to infuse your mind, which then empowered your thoughts and your actions.

Have you ever made the decision to focus on the positive in your life, instead of the negative- to meet each day with an attitude of expectation, gratitude, and intention to make the world a little better because you walked in it today? Your mind and thoughts become attuned to new gifts, inspiration and opportunities that just came to you and blessed your life.

Whenever we open our small mind to God’s Mind and Spirit, we find that there is Something there–right here–even deeper within us than the thoughts that swirl around in our brain. It’s the Divine energy of Wisdom, Love, Healing, Forgiveness, and unity, shaping and lifting our thoughts to reflect something of God.

We are always either opening to the divine power or withdrawing from it with our every thought and intention and action. That’s what God discerns and responds to. God doesn’t judge us or blame us, because our whole life is a process of learning to find this connection and gradually trust it and open to it more and more. God lets us go at our own pace. It’s up to us how quickly we progress. But every time we open our mind and spirit and move closer to God, God is there waiting for us. The psalmist goes on,

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.

There are times for all of us when we feel far from God’s presence. There are times when we feel like we’ve somehow made our bed in Sheol, which is the Hebrew word for the dark, dreary pit of hell. But so many people have experienced those hard, hellish times as times of growth, deepening, healing, and even of finding God in a new way.

Bobbie McKay and Lew Musil have spent the last several years listening to people telling their stories of spiritual healing in the variety of ways people experience it. They’ve now published three books on their findings, and these books are full of uplifting stories of people experiencing God’s presence in all kinds of situations.

In their second book, Taking a Chance on God, one person described this experience of being in a kind of Sheol.

For two years I had intense back pain, so severe that I finally could barely walk.

Everything in my life was compromised by my pain. I went to doctor after doctor–tried alternate forms of medicine ... you name it–I tried it. Nothing worked. It was finally suggested that I face the fact I would end up in a wheel chair ... No medical solution could possibly help my situation.

But at the same time that I felt about as low as you can get physically and emotionally ... I was aware that my spirit was somehow growing ... I can't explain it. Suddenly I found myself in a deeper spiritual place ... it felt like each day I became more spiritually aware of God's presence in my life and in the world around me. It was as if right in the middle of the pain was the presence of God ... and I knew that in a brand new way. It didn't change my pain ... but somehow coexisted with the pain. And I was filled with gratitude.[1]

Some people have felt a deep peace filling them in the midst of chaos. Some have seen the figure of Jesus, some have felt a touch on their arm, others have heard a voice. Some people go through struggles and don’t feel anything different. But in any case, knowing that we are never really alone and that God has a plan for our lives helps us find the hidden gifts and lessons in every trial and challenge.

In the last part of the psalm we’ll look at today, the psalmist says,

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.

This makes me think of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the world's first person in space, who was reputed to have said "I don't see any God up here."[2] Seeing God isn’t a matter of what we look at, but of how we look. We are conditioned to look at the world with our analytical left brain: “That’s a maple tree–I wonder if it’s a sugar maple.” We isolate it, label it, maybe figure out if it’s any use to us or not, maybe even study it to figure out how it grows or maybe how we can keep it from making little maple babies grow all over our yard. And then we go onto the next thing.

This way at looking at things feels totally natural to us. But it’s totally unnatural. This way of seeing places us outside of nature, as though we’re looking at it through a window or a microscope. But it’s a “natural fact”--we’re part of nature as much as the maple tree or any other living or inorganic thing. We’re exchanging molecules with the world around us with every breath and bite and drop of sweat. How long do we think we could we live without the natural world totally supporting us with its air, warmth, food, and coffee? Every part of this natural world we’re part of is interdependent on the other parts. In fact, the earth isn’t really made up of lots of distinct, separate things, as our eyes and minds tell us. It’s one thing made up of lots of interconnected aspects and processes all working together at once.

So the next time we take a walk, what if we saw ourselves as a part of Creation that is enjoying and appreciating itself? When we’re gardening, what if we saw ourselves as part of creation making itself more beautiful or productive? Right here and now, we are a part of Creation that is pondering itself and marveling at its connection to its Creator. Even when we’re at work with no view of the outside world, we are part of this evolving creation that has organized itself into businesses and organizations devoted to enhancing each other’s lives in all sorts of specialized ways.

This whole amazing world that’s made up of ancient space debris leftover from exploding stars is a miracle. And we’re part of this miracle that is always moving, evolving and unfolding all around us, inside us, and through us. That’s right–through us- -because God formed our inward parts and knit us together in our mother’s womb and set us in it so that we can participate in the evolving and unfolding of this world. We’re co-creators with God.

So where is God? Where isn’t God? God is here, there, and everywhere. God is beyond us, around us, among us, in us, and working through us all the time. As the psalmist said,

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;

it is so high that I cannot attain it.

We can’t comprehend it or explain it. All we can do is open to it in trust, gratitude and praise.

I’ll close with a poem by John Squadra, that helps us perceive the world through our spirits.

If you listen,
not to the pages or preachers
but to the smallest flowergrowing from a crack
in your heart,
you will hear a great song
moving across a wide ocean
whose water is the music
connecting all the islands
of the universe together,
and touching all
you will feel it
touching you
around you. . .
embracing you
with light.[3]

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