To Know Fully as We Are Fully Known (3)

 

Our step-by-step walk through the Woodland of wonder that is Psalm 139, is being undertaken through the title’s prism of knowing fully as we are fully known. This echoes Paul’s words at the close of the ubiquitous 1 Corinthians 13, beloved of wedding ceremonies. Paul concludes his hymn to love by stating: When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now we see in a mirror as in a riddle, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. (1 Corinthians 13:11-12)

Paul had already set the stage earlier, when he wrote, If anyone supposes that he knows anything, he has not yet known as he ought to know; but if anyone loves God, he is known by Him. (1 Cor.8:2-3) Indeed, as we discover the vastness of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit’s intimate knowledge of us we cannot but be inspired and motivated to love and to be vulnerable to be loved. The Mirror translation of verse 3 reads: Loving God is so easy when you understand that He knows you! Let God’s knowledge of you inspire your love for him and for your fellow human.

So, now we come to even more intimate details about our formation in Creation, conception, and birth. As it is written:

For You formed my inward parts;
You wove me in my mother’s womb.
14 I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Wonderful, indeed, are all Your works,
And my soul knows it very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret,
And skilfully wrought in the depths of the earth;
16 Your eyes have seen my unformed substance;
And in Your book were all written
The days that were ordained for me,
When as yet there was not one of them.

17 How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18 If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand.
When I awake, I am still with You.

In Matthew Fox’s penetrating book Creation Spirituality, he writes:

Creation is all space, all time – all things past, present, and future. Among these three ways of conceptualizing time, creation leans the most in the direction of the present, for the most significant of the times is the Now, the “Eternal Now.”…

…In us the past and present come together to birth a future. As Meister Eckhart puts it:

 

               God is creating the entire universe fully and totally in this present now.

Everything God created six thousand years ago [sic] – and even previous to that as God made the world – God creates now all at once.

Everything which God created millions of years ago and everything which will be created by God after millions of years – if the world endures until then – God is creating all that in the innermost and deepest realms of the soul.

Everything of the past and everything of the present, and everything of the future God creates in the innermost realms of the soul.

(From Creation Spirituality – Matthew Fox, Harper San Francisco, 1991. Pp 8-9.)

We see this mystery poetically revealed in these lines from Psalm 139, My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skilfully wrought in the depths of the earth; 16 Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; And in Your book were all written The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them.

It is so critical that we read the Psalms in an unfettered time frame. This is especially relevant here, for, even as “the Lamb of God [Jesus the Christ] was slain before the foundation [“fall”] of the world,” so also were we in Christ, who is the Alpha and Omega – the Beginning and the End - of all things. Paul points out in Colossians1:16, For in Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities – all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together…

The eternal, prophetic implications of this are way over our heads, almost too extraordinary and outrageous for us to comprehend (Ps. 139:6): it hurts our heads just to think of it!

There is Scriptural precedent: Isaiah 49: 1b – The LORD called me from the womb; from the inner parts of my mother, he named me. Of course, we might read this as specific to Isaiah, and yet we are all ‘called’ of God, Who has prepared works – works “greater” than Jesus’! - for us, beforehand, that we might walk (co-work) with Him in the doing of them.

In Jeremiah 1:5, we read, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you...”  And in Job 10:8-13, we read: ⁸ ‘Your hands fashioned and made me altogether, and would You destroy me? ⁹ ‘Remember now, that You have made me as clay; And would You turn me into dust again? ¹⁰ ‘Did You not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese; ¹¹ Clothe me with skin and flesh,

And knit me together with bones and sinews? ¹² ‘You have granted me life and lovingkindness; And Your care has preserved my spirit…

 

We have never been separated from God! We were in it at the beginning, and, through the crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ, we shall remain in and with God unto the Age of ages!

Remember what Paul wrote to the Roman church: 38 And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. 39 No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39, NLT)

(Sandy beach - image, iStock)

And God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit thinks of you always; uncountable thoughts that outnumber the grains of sand on all the beaches! To Them, we may confidently plead: Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings… (Ps.17:8) Or, as in Ps.56:8, You keep track of all my sorrows. [wandering] You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book.

 

Your life did not start when you were conceived in your mother’s womb – though  God supervised your becoming there, from nothing! But you have been God’s, ever since he had the thought of you, when he announced: “Let Us create Humankind in Our image, according to Our likeness…”

 

I invite you, Beloved, to meditate on these thoughts, and to ask Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to confirm and affirm you, as you are, and have always been, in Christ.

 

Amen!

Grace and peace, fellow Wayfarers. Go well.

 

EXTRA! EXTRA!

From the collection by Mercy Aiken who works with the Network of Evangelicals For The Middle East, and who co-wrote Yet in The Dark Streets Shining – A Palestinian Story of Hope & Resilience in Bethlehem with Bishara Awad.

The desert shatters the soul's arrogance and leaves body and soul crying out in thirst and hunger. In the desert we trust God or die. --Dan B. Allender, The Healing Path — with Adrianna Ekailan.