Nowhere to Run--November 25, 2019

Nowhere to Run--November 25, 2019

"Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?

 If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.

 If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,

 even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.

 If I say, 'Surely the darkness shall cover me,

 and the light around me become night,'

 even the darkness is not dark to you;

 the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you." [Psalm 139:7-12]

You don't usually think of the phrase "nowhere to run" as a hopeful sentiment.  But for the psalmist, it is exactly the good news he needs.  There is nowhere he--or you, or I--can go where God isn't already.

And notice just how far the ancient poet is willing to push that thought.  He doesn't just cover the limits of the map in terms of east or west ("the wings of the morning" suggest the direction of the sunrise, and "the farthest limits of the sea" would have been the great western boundary).  The psalmist sees God in locations that aren't locatable with Google Maps, too.  "If I ascend to heaven, you are there," he says--which we might assume is a given, because, you know, it's heaven.  But the rest of that thought is a bit surprising:  "if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there."  Sheol is the Hebrew name for the realm of the dead--it's not really "hell" the way later theologians would imagine fire, brimstone, and red-jump-suited devils with pitchforks.  It's more like just the "underworld," where the dead are--all of the dead.  But even there, God is present.

So the psalmist dares to claim that God is even there in the grave, even in death, even in the empty space carved out by grief like a cavern in the heart.  There is no place about which God squeamishly says, "Oooh, I can't go there." There is no point at which God turns back.  There is no location too profane, too dangerous, too un-spiritual, or too hostile, for God to go.

And therefore, wherever your day or mine takes you, the living God is present already.

Today begins a week in which many will travel--sometimes to distant places, sometimes close by but to see family who are distant in other ways.  Some will make their ways back home uncertain if they will be truly welcome at the table, and others dread the conflicts brewing under the surface of small talk and sweet potatoes.  Some will be at tables while their hearts are distant, lost in that empty cavern where grief lives, missing someone who is not at the table this year.  Some will mourn while they fake a smile as they see the fracturing of families into different branches that all go their separate ways.  Like all holidays, Thanksgiving has an unavoidable bittersweetness that way.  

But wherever the week takes us, God is there already.  For certain in the happy moments, but just as surely in the tearful ones.... and in the ones that bring the difficult mix of joy and sorrow at the same time.  

Whether your week takes you east to the wings of the morning, westward to the farthest limits of the sea, or to the wistful chamber of grief as you remember the faces and chairs of those who are at their rest now, the unshakeable promise of the Scriptures is that God is already there... going with you through the journey, and all the way home.

There is, after all, nowhere to run that God isn't.

Lord God, help us to know your presence in the light moments, the dark moments, and the bittersweet moments, too.