Psa 139:7-17 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!
The psalmist has reached a place in life where, at least to the psalmist’s understanding, the Spirit of God surrounds us all, and even before we are known by anyone else, the psalmist is sure that God knows us, and cares for us. But was the psalmist always so sure? Maybe, there was a time, when the psalmist felt like a blade of grass.
I wonder what a blade of grass feels. Not, “feels like”, that would be easy. We could go outside, kneel upon the lawn, and gently glide our hand across the top of the grass, already turning brown as winter’s cold approaches, and let each tiny blade tickle our open palm. Or we could really get serious about this and press our fingers deep between the blades until our fingertips press into the gritty earth beneath. But, that’s really not what I’m talking about. I’m really wondering what a blade of grass feels. And not just any blade of grass, I’m talking about a very particular blade of grass. One in a billion, or a trillion, but one nevertheless, just one.
This blade of grass which has captured my thoughts – let’s give it a name – if we’re going to get to know this blade of grass, we can’t just call it “blade of grass” – let’s call it Sid. That has a nice organic sound to it. Well, this particular blade of grass – um Sid – has seen his better days. You see, I’m remembering July in Batesville Mississippi, and it’s hot. Several weeks before, things were going well. Sid was full of life and the color of spring, but on this day, as I remember standing at my kitchen sink and staring out the window, at the lawn losing its color, Sid stands as one among many – dry and brittle and very far from green. So I stood there, wondering what this blade of grass – Sid – must be feeling. What do you think? Does he know that it’s July and he still has August to go. I wonder, as he looks skyward, and feels the heat of the day, scorching the life from him – does he know that it’s rain that he needs?
Or does he just feel an ache, a longing, for something, to fill him with life again. As I stood at my kitchen window, one hot summer afternoon, and pondered this deep existential question, I was interrupted by a tug at my elbow. “Daddy, will you fix me a drink?” my seven year old son asked. He didn’t notice the tears in my eyes as I handed him a glass of ice water. He turned and hurried away, anxious to continue…whatever. You see, I remembered a time, when he didn’t know how to ask for a drink. He probably didn’t know what a drink was – like a little blade of grass. He just felt this gnawing in his stomach, this ache in his tummy, and he cried. My wife would go to him, even in the dark of night, no matter when, no matter what, and take him in her loving arms, console him, and provide for him.
God, like a mother, comes to us even when all we know is that something is missing, something is wrong, something is making our tummy ache, and we cry. God takes us in arms of love and fills our emptiness.
Continue reading Prevenient Grace and Sid
