Last Sunday we read Psalm 139. Psalm 139 is one of the most dramatic pieces of Scripture. It affirms God's total knowledge of us; that he knows us better than we know ourselves.
An obvious reason is that he saw my unformed body. Another that he knows all the days ordained for me. Our self knowledge of our early life is nil as is our knowledge of our future.
What we might excel in is our self-knowledge in adult life - the middling bit. There at least we can know what we're about even if God knows us better. Or so we'd like to think.
I have always been struck by the disciples' question at the Last Supper when Jesus says someone will betray him. They asked, "Is it me?" (Mark 14:19). Do we know ourselves in mid-adulthood?
I have also witnessed a thousand broken promises made by grown up people - promises made perhaps with great ceremony - only for time to prove that the vowmaker did not know their own heart. A few days ago I read a glowing statement by a wife writing about her husband after he'd had a great sadness: she wrote of how much it made her realise she loved him. She added that, looking through their future life, I want to be there for him through it all. I found the statement scary because I know this model marriage, applauded in several Christian publications, ended with her running off with someone else one Christmas. Through it all, didn't even mean, as it was to turn out, through very much.
The Psalmist wisely ends with a prayer that is ironically often used as a statement of emptiness: Search me! The believer can add that crucial other word - Search me, God. The disciples didn't know themselves very well, but they knew who did!
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