June 22

Psalm 139
I know, this psalm belonged to yesterday's reading but I didn't have a chance to comment on it so I am using blogger's privilege.
More than once, I have heard this psalm at a funeral. I am sure that people who chose it mean it to be comforting to those left behind and maybe it held special significance to the dead. But I remember the first time I heard it as a young child and it was really close to Christmas. Santa Claus and God suddenly merged together in my mind. You know "He sees you when you're sleeping. He knows when you're awake. He knows if you've been good or bad, so be good for goodness sake!"
That one took quite a bit of untangling on the part of my mother since I still believed in Santa Claus at the time. I think it involved God using Santa as one of his agents just as God uses us to do his work. At the time, I had several uncles in Vietnam and we sent care packages of razor blades, cookies, kleenex and drawings each month. Mother liken that to us acting as God's agent but giving presents like Santa. But it still bothered me enough to remember it 45 years later.
As a grownup, I still have issues with this psalm. Mostly because so very many of my thoughts are not nice. I try really hard not to act on those thoughts but I do have ugly words about the yucky people in front of me in the checkout line run through my head. And don't get me started on lying, cheating politicians. I know that God would not appreciate my 'holier-than-thou' words. If he knows all my thoughts, searches me all the time, well then, he knows just how black my heart really is.
One of my rabbi friends and I had a conversation about this recently and he said that in the Jewish faith, it is our RESPONSE to such thoughts rather than the actual thought itself. And once when I was doing a meditation with a Buddishist monk, he said when such thoughts enter your head, flick them aside like you change the screen on your IPhone. A very modern monk, he is.
What about you? Is it comforting to know that God is totally in your head, heart, and body or does that send you funny like it does me?

NT - Acts 14:28
Wow, what strength Paul must have had to turn aside a crowd who wanted to worship them as gods only to fall into the the hands of Jews who wanted to stone them.
"We must go through many hardships to enter the Kingdom of God." vs. 22b
As Americans, we don't know this. We get to choose to worship or not. You can go to church on Sunday or you can run by the river or just loll about in your hammock watching movies or sports. No one cares.
But there are still parts of the world where being a Christian is not only hard, it is downright unsafe. Even deadly.
Torture, beatings, and eventually death. Paul know this and was still the fiery champion of Jesus. May we walk gracefully in his huge shadow.