This year for Lent, we’re trying something new! What if we all spend the entire season studying and reading and praying and pondering on the same text? What if we read or pray it every day? What if we meditate on it? Or if we memorize it? Or if we print it out and put it on our fridge, on bookmark it in our computer, or write it in our own handwriting in our journal? What might we hear, see, or notice? What if it helps us hear, see, or notice something in our Sunday morning readings? What if we all get sick of it and never want to read another psalm ever again? I suppose we won’t know until we try.
So, this year, we’re all going to spend Lent with Psalm 139. The really, really good bits, and the hard parts too. You’re invited to read it daily. To spend some quality time and really dig in, or to rush through it and see what God can do with that, too. Throughout the season, we’ll find some ways to share what we’re hearing and learning and noticing, and we’ll continue to share resources around Psalm 139 as we dig deeper. But for now, for this season of Lent, let’s just read, one psalm, all together.
Psalm 139
O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away.
You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely.
You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.
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.
For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.
My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.
How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
I try to count them—they are more than the sand; I come to the end—I am still with you.
O that you would kill the wicked, O God, and that the bloodthirsty would depart from me—
those who speak of you maliciously, and lift themselves up against you for evil!
Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies.
Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts.
See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.