Here is the first of a two part piece. Part 2 will arrive on Tuesday.
Do remember that Fr. Marcus is on his sponsored radio marathon on Sunday. You can still sponsor him, AND request a dedication. What would you like Fr. Marcus to play? And who would you like him to play it for?

‘Our unspeakably wonderful God‘

My Dear Friends, 

How has your day begun? Hopefully with something to lift your spirits.

Mine were certainly lifted as I read psalm 139 during morning prayer. The first 18 verses are some of the most beautiful and powerful in scripture, so I shall unpack some of them over a couple of these offerings. But first read the psalm, and if you can, read it slowly and out loud.

Psalm 139 vs 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.

The final verses are a bit messy, and the psalmist want to get rid of all that detracts from God. But we will come to that another day.

So, the first 6 verses speak of our unspeakably wonderful God.
This psalm is about some of the deepest levels of human experience, written by someone who knows that God is a God who saves, because he has recently brought his people home from exile and re established them in a homeland.

It reminds us that God is always doing things – always active in our lives. ‘O Lord, you have searched me’ could be better translated ‘You have dug deep in to me’. 
The psalmist knows how deep is our subconscious, and he is aware of depths of the human mind and experience even if he doesn’t use the words of today’s psychology.
He continues ‘and known me.’ Not just a knowledge of who he was, but a deep total knowledge right into his soul. This is so liberating because we can hide nothing, even our darkest thoughts – but in spite of them we are still loved.
It reminds us that when we go through those moments when we feel that we don’t believe in God, the good news is that he still believes in us.

The psalmist continues with this list of what God knows about us, those intimate and personal details, even the thoughts we have. You have known my  thoughts centuries before they entered my mind, you sift through all my actions to discover every detail about them, and what motivates them in order to discover the real ‘me’ made in your image, and not tainted by my false ego.
For my part, I don’t know what I am going to say before I say it, but you, God, know it because you know me better than I know myself. You know what I mean, you know the connections between my attitude, my life, my faith or lack of it. You are in front of me, behind me, even before me and also after me, and in all of this you continue to search me out- because you love me. You get me even when I don’t get myself. I am enfolded by your presence, and that leads me not to fear or horror because I want to protect my privacy, but to a sense of reverence and awe at the mystery of such a wonderful God. This is sheer bliss, that we are so deeply in the presence of God.

The next 6 verses  move from the depths within, to the vastness without!
To put this in context we need to remind ourselves of those who believed that God was territorial. Here was here, but not there. This was made clear and famous by Boney M in their song, which you will remember
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down
Yeah, we wept, when we remembered Zion
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down
Yeah, we wept, when we remembered Zion

There the wicked
Carried us away in captivity
Required from us a song
Now how shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?

From psalm 137 only 2 psalms before, but the thought ‘How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land. God could not be there!

But our psalm 139 clearly states, that God can find us (because he searches for us) and we can find him (because he was already looking) everywhere.

Even if I think I can flee from you, or turn my back on you, even if I sink to the depths of a darkness of my own, or others making – even in the depths of hell, you are there. 
But it gets even more beautiful – even darkness is not dark for you – ‘ the night is as bright as the day,  for darkness is as light to you.’

In even the uttermost parts of the sea, places that no one knew of, God is present – and God is love.

In our tough times, it is so important to realise that God can make use of the pain, sorrow, even the evil of this world, and bring forth good our of chaos. It is good to be reminded of this as we approach Advent and the beginning of our story of Christ, but the same message is part of our Easter story too. This story is who we are, and our God is unspeakably wonderful!

Verses 13 onward next time.

Bless you, Bless you, Bless you,

As ever,

Fr Marcus