Running in place

"Where can I go from Your Spirit?  Where can I flee from your presence?"  Psalm 139:7




It seems we are always moving.  Out of the womb, into life, through our parents' arms, into adulthood, the labyrinths of work, education, marriage, children, grandchildren, and then the end of life issues.
  One big journey ---  A trek, a pilgrimage, a race with an unknown destination and never rest.

We don't sign up for it, we are just born into it ---- with little instruction or guidance.

This verse from Psalm 139 is nestled in what I call the "Birthday Psalm", as one should read it every year on their birthday.  It shows how God has been at every instance of our existence, from conception to death.  It covers all the questions of life:  "Why am I here?"  "Who made me and all of this?" "Where am I going?"  "Am I really loved?" These questions fuel us as a hamster in a wheel. We run and seek, begging for answers.   The answers to all of this lies in Jehovah God.  He is the grand Designer, Parent and End Point of our lives.

The verse asks, "Where can I flee from your presence?"  The word presence in Hebrew literally means "face".  God's face tells us that He sees us, He speaks to us, He listens to us.  Unlike a busy father whose back is often turned, God is always watching with full attention.  He is overwhelmingly interested in where we are and where we are going. His face,  His being, His fascination, His delight, is focused on us.....like a painter with a canvas.  This attention seems to strong for us --- too holy, too penetrating...so we do what all men have done since Adam:  we move away.

We can not hide from God.  This can be a two-sided coin:  this can bring us to fear, as God knows all of us, or to comfort, in that God still loves us despite knowing all of us. 

Most of us have taken this verse to challenge.  We have attempted to hide from God, from his voice, just as Adam and Eve in the garden.  We have made poor choices, sunk in our doubts, run into shadows.  His face terrifies us as it will burn all lies aside and show us our true selves.  We have stumbled, tumbled, rattled locked door knobs, hoping for an escape room to open to us.  That face!
All this moving ---- yet never really moving.  We find that we have been on a treadmill of sorts and we end up at the same place we started:  needing God desperately.  We are Peter, who, looking into Jesus' face after denying him, went out and wept bitterly. 

"Where can I go from Your Spirit?  Where can I flee from your presence?"

The Psalmist answers it in spades in verse 16:  "All my days were written in your book and planned before a single one of them began."  He knows that running will always lead back to God --- stumbling for what seems miles and miles are only inches to Him.  As a toddler scoots across a room that seems enormous, only to be lifted up by his father, we too are unable to escape a love that so covers our boundaries that we cannot compete ---- so we simply collapse in His arms, look into the Jehovah face, and sleep.

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