“How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
If I could count them, they are more than the sand.
I awake, and I am still with you.” (Psalm 139:17-18)
It is so easy to take for granted how much our God loves us and cares for every single aspect of our lives. Like the psalmist says, they are more than the sand, and last time I checked, I can’t even count the sand that gets stuck in my surfshorts at the end of the day. It is also incredibly easy to live life without even considering our God as a part of it. And yet he actually is deeply connected to us in ways we can only hope to one day fathom in our future glory. While Paul beautifully lays out the depth of God for us in in Romans 8, that “neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord,” the psalmist in today’s reading gives us the concrete examples of this love of God we have.
First, the psalmist absolutely adores God’s omniscience, his ability to know our thoughts at all times. Even in our most private and unseen part of us, our thoughts, he knows us and is there. The psalmist acknowledges that while God’s knowledge is so incomprehensible and unattainable, it is wonderful. Do you think of God’s omniscience as wonderful? I certainly don’t on the average day. Our God knows us, knows when we are in pain or suffering, as well as when we are filled with joy and gratitude. He knows and loves when we seek him and his kingdom, and that is wonderful to know because we have nothing to run or hide from.
The psalmist is comforted by God’s omnipresence. Our God is with us when we are near or far. The psalmist says, “Where shall I go from your Spirit?” (139:7). Except unlike the psalmist, we Christians have something even greater that we must not downplay. When Jesus was on earth he said that he would send a Helper, the Holy Spirit. We are literally filled with the Spirit which will never leave us.
These two qualities of our God are just the tip of the iceberg of His care for us. In your prayer time or study of the word, you have a God who is delighting in your thoughts and is alongside you every moment. But moreso, he is literally with you. Because of his love for us, for the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, we can be certain that His omniscience, omnipresence, and care is for eternity.