they
were all of them written in your book;
every one of my days was decreed
before one of them came into being.
To me, how mysterious your thoughts,
the sum of them not to be numbered!
If I count them, they are more than the sand;
to finish, I must be eternal, like you.
…slight
problem ahead. Your eyes saw all my
actions, they were all of them written in your book. So I am five years old, back in Sunday
school, with a dear lady informing me that God is watching everything I do, writing
it all in his book, even what I think – that last bit always seemed specially unfair
to me, a serious invasion of privacy. In
later years it was to find that some people do actually believe that God hovers
there, all-knowing, with a plan, a blueprint, specially for them… and they live
in anxiety lest they are departing from it.
The other great corollary is that, if you do what God doesn’t like, or
follow some plan of your own, there are consequences, you get punished. These days, even in the secular culture, there
is the constant litany that some “karma” is at work – “what goes around comes
around” -- and we should help it along a bit -- we must find out who did wrong
(unless it’s us) in order to ensure that they “are accountable” and suffer
accordingly. I think this view of God
and of “justice” is something we acquire, perhaps from infancy, even from the
church. …every one of my days was
decreed, writes this Psalmist, before one of them came into being. Really?
Well, the Psalmist saw this
divine surveillance as a wonderful strength and comfort. He writes… he sings of God… lovingly, trustingly. He is not afraid. What is written about him in God’s book will
be merciful and understanding. But what
follows now in this Psalm is, to say the least, abrupt and discordant. There is right and wrong, he firmly believes,
there is good and evil, and there are consequences. So we get this jarring passage:
O God, that you would slay the wicked!
Keep away from me, violent hands!
With deceit they rebel against you
and set your designs at naught.
Do I not hate those who hate you,
abhor those who rise against you?
I hate them with a perfect hate
and they are foes to me.
You won’t find those verses in the NZ Anglican
Prayer Book. They were expunged, back in
about 1989, along with various other chunks of the Book of Psalms, as
“unsuitable for use in the corporate worship of the church”.[1] But they reflect the ways we sometimes feel. Do we seriously think we need to censor our
thoughts and reactions in prayer, as though God is so easily shocked, or too
dim to understand us in our frequent frailty or fury? Indeed, the best thing to do with our violent
negativities is just that, to bear them into God’s presence, lay them down
there and watch them start to change. C
S Lewis wrote: …naively, almost
childishly, (Psalm) 139, in the middle of its hymn of praise throws in, “Wilt
thou not slay the wicked, O God?” – as if it were surprising that such a simple
remedy for human ills had not occurred to the Almighty.
Well, best of all, we can remember that the
pinnacle of God’s unveiling, in Jewish faith and in Christ, is that hatred,
enmity and violence are replaced by love and mercy – and that is the true
reflection of God. I am he who blots
out your transgressions, says Isaiah, and I will not remember your sins.[2]
We learn in this Psalm that it is good to be seen
by God, known, understood and loved, by the Creator who made us for that
purpose. Jesus lived and showed the God
he called Father, and their mutual love and trust.[3] In the stillness and silence of Christian
Meditation we have space to be present also, in love and confidence, to God who
sees and watches.
Miles Coverdale (1535)
Thine eyes se myne vnparfitnesse,
they stonde all writte i thy boke: my dayes were fashioned, when as
yet there was not one of them. How deare are yi coucels vnto me o
God? O how greate is the summe of
them? Yf I tell them, they are mo in nombre then the sonde: when I
wake vp, I am present with the.
Wilt thou not slaye
ye wicked (oh God) that the bloudethyrstie mighte departe fro me? For they speake vnright of
the, thine enemies exalte them selues presumptuously. I hate them (o LORDE) that
hate the, & I maye not awaye with those that ryse vp agaynst the? Yee I hate them right sore,
therfore are they myne enemies.
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