Hope + Purpose

What’s your favorite bible verse? For a long time, mine was Jeremiah 29:11. I guess it still is one of my favorites as it was one of the first I memorized. But if someone were to ask me that now, it would be an entire chapter, not just one verse. And that’s Psalm 139.

Several years ago, during my church’s annual 21 days of prayer and fasting, I was really struggling emotionally. For many reasons. But during one of our church services, I decided to go up to the altar for prayer. I can’t remember what my pastor had asked people to come up for, but I went up and he started praying.

It was a nice moment. I was standing there with my hands open and ready to receive whatever the Lord had for me, but my pastor kept circling back around to me. On his final pass, he turned off his mic and read my mail. He said that I had to let go of feeling unworthy.

All of a sudden, I’m balling my eyes out and realizing for the first time that there was a name for this feeling I had. (I was still a pretty new Christian and very new to processing feelings.) But it was while he was praying that he mentioned Psalm 139. In his prayer, he referenced verse 14 and talked about how I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I’m sure I went home and journaled everything and got some sort of revelation about why I had those feelings. But more than all of that, Psalm 139 never left me.

It started out with just verse 14, but eventually, I began to read the entire chapter when I would go to it. And all these years later, it’s still my go-to.

This year, I decided that I wanted to memorize the entire chapter. I’ve never memorized a whole chapter before (and I still haven’t), but I know that this one is one that I want to be written on my heart.

So through my recent habitual reading of this chapter, I began to notice it was broken up into sections. Here’s the breakdown of sections, along with my personalized themes…
Verses 1-6: God knows me better than I know myself.
Verses 7-12: God never leaves me.
Verses 13-16: God is my Creator.
Verses 17-18: God considers me.
Verses 19-22: God’s enemies are my enemies.
Verses 23-24: God will guide me if I let him.

I know some of you might be thinking, “Ok, now what? Why does any of that matter?” Well, it doesn’t. But for anyone who says that God doesn’t have a sense of humor… keep reading.

One day, I thought, “These little sections need subtitles.” Now don’t go and get your holiness in a twist, I’m not talking about rewriting the Bible. I just figured it might make good material for a blog (hi).

So, I have these subtitles, which weren’t concrete until I sat down to write this, but there’s one that I came up with that isn’t listed. It’s for verses 7-12, which read in the New Living Translation…

I can never escape from your Spirit! I can never get away from your presence!
If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to the grave, you are there.
If I ride the wings of the morning, if I dwell by the farthest oceans,
even there your hand will guide me, and your strength will support me.
I could ask the darkness to hide me and the light around me to become night—
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.

Have you figured it out my other subtitle yet? That’s right……. YOU CAN RUN, BUT YOU CAN’T HIDE!

It’s ok, you can laugh. I still do every time I think about it, because typically when you hear this it’s said by a villain in a movie that looks and sounds a little creepy. But I’m about to change that for you. There are two perspectives from which you can read this section of Psalm 139.

Perspective #1: A person who does evil things can think they are able to get away with what they did, but God sees and knows everything. No matter where they end up or what they decide to do, whether or not they ever get caught… God sees it. God knows it. And whether on this side of eternity or the other, God will bring justice. You can run, but you can’t hide.

Perspective #2: A Christian who is burned out and tired. They have a relationship with Jesus, but they have allowed distractions to get in the way of it. Or they’ve done something they are ashamed of and don’t want to be seen. Before long, they are running. Maybe not physically running, but emotionally and spiritually, they aren’t facing their problems or processing their emotions. They do it for so long, they don’t even notice until they stop long enough to look up and see that they are lost. They are on a road in the middle of nowhere with no idea what direction to go in. They feel alone and hopeless, but they aren’t. No matter how far they run, intentionally or unintentionally, God is always there. You can run, but you can’t hide.

Do you know what kind of relief that brings me in a time like today? No, I may not be running, but this is definitely a wilderness time, in my opinion. We are all standing in this unknown place wondering where we are and where we are going. I mean… COVID-19. What is this thing? Where did it come from? Why is it so bad? We have viruses and different strands of the flu pop up all the time, but this one brings the whole world to a halt? Why is that?

I know, I know… some say it’s a terrible virus that was spread naturally by some people in China and it just spreads too easily. Others believe it was an act of bioterrorism. And still, others believe that it’s the government’s way of taking away everything we find comfort in so that we are completely dependent on them.

Well, whether you believe this is all one big conspiracy theory or just a natural occurrence (yes, or even prophecies being fulfilled), we as Christians shouldn’t be worried or scared or hopeless. And these verses can be a reminder of that for you. God is always everywhere. He sees all and knows all. He is never caught off guard and has always been in control, and that’s not going to change now.

I don’t really care what the reason for this virus is or how it originated. I trust God to take care of me regardless. But that doesn’t mean I’m not struggling in other ways.

Personally, one of the hardest things for me during this crisis has been trying to continue feeling like I still have a purpose. (I know from experience that feeling like you have no purpose can lead you down a deep hole of despair called depression. And it’s hard to get out of.)

I have two jobs, both of which I really enjoy. One of them is on hold until all this blows over. The other is allowing me to work from home but is so incredibly different that I feel at a loss. It’s truly hard to see any kind of purpose for my life while in this pandemic crisis. And I know I’m not alone in that.

Yet, I’m sitting here writing. For the first time this year. When I first started this blog, I was writing at least once a week. Sometimes more. But for some reason, my writing slowed. Sure, I could blame it on lack of time with my working two jobs and all, but I’m going on my third week of working from home with one job and this is the first time I sit down with the intent to write. (And all it took was a pandemic and no clear vision of an end in sight. Insert eye roll here.)

Whatever the reason, God has reminded me that there is still purpose in all of this. We may not be clear of what it is for each of us individually, but please believe that God always knew this was going to be our life and he has a plan for it. In fact, my favorite verse of Psalm 139 is 16, and it says so…

“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.”

Every time I read that verse, I don’t just feel peace and hope… I feel purpose. And I hope you do too.