Psalm 139

1 O Lord, you have examined my heart and know everything about me.
2 You know when I sit down or stand up. You know my thoughts even when I’m far away.
3 You see me when I travel and when I rest at home. You know everything I do.
4 You know what I am going to say even before I say it, Lord.
5 You go before me and follow me. You place your hand of blessing on my head.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,too great for me to understand!
7 I can never escape from your Spirit!I can never get away from your presence!
8 If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to the grave, you are there.
9 If I ride the wings of the morning, if I dwell by the farthest oceans,
10 even there your hand will guide me, and your strength will support me.
11 I could ask the darkness to hide me and the light around me to become night—
12 but even in darkness I cannot hide from you. To you the night shines as bright as day. Darkness and light are the same to you.
13 You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.
15 You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.
16 You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book.
Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.
17 How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered!
18 I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand! And when I wake up,
you are still with me!
19 O God, if only you would destroy the wicked! Get out of my life, you murderers!
20 They blaspheme you; your enemies misuse your name.
21 O Lord, shouldn’t I hate those who hate you? Shouldn’t I despise those who oppose you?
22 Yes, I hate them with total hatred, for your enemies are my enemies.
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life.
I understand why some people don't like God...they think He's a pest.

Could you imagine somebody that would never leave? "I can never escape from your Spirit!"

"Even the darkness cannot hide me from you!"

But that doesn't mean rejection is the only way to respond to God's inexhaustible pursuit of us. We could choose to welcome Him.

Read how Francis Thompson describes God's pursuit of us in his poem The Hound of Heaven
I FLED Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat—and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet—
‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.’
For 180 lines Francis Thompson, an opium addict who eventually died of tuberculosis, describes a life spent running from God great love out of fear he would have to give up the life he knew...as wretched as it was....so that he could pursue all the things he believed would bring fulfillment.

Finally...in abject failure and exhaustion...he hears the precious words of God ...

I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou drawest love from thee, who drawest Me.’

Our Psalmist regarded God's pursuit as a profound blessing. Most of us...not so much. Let's look forward to a new year in fellowship with our great creator. For, as Francis Thompson portrayed the word's of God, "all thing betray the person who betrays God."

Live boldly out there today...