Inescapable God

 LORD, you have searched me out and known me;     you know my sitting down and my rising up;    you discern my thoughts from afar.Where can I go then from your Spirit?     where can I flee from your presence?If I climb up to heaven, you are there; if I make the grave my bed, you are there also.  If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,Even there your hand will lead me and your right hand hold me fast.~Psalm 139This psalm is appointed for today, this day before Christmas Eve, this day when the light of each day lasts a bit longer, this day before the Great Light of Love and Hope will be born again for the first time in our lives.And whoever decided what psalm we should read today made a brilliant decision. These words taught me how beloved we all are...so beloved that there is no place we can go that God cannot find us, no part of us (our interior or exterior) that God does not know and did not shape and form..."knit together in our mothers' wombs!"

As a chaplain in an elementary school, I love to tell stories from scripture in ways that will bring them to life for children, but I don't have to make this one up. Margaret Wise Brown, best known for the children's classic Goodnight Moon, also wrote the most beautiful interpretation of Psalm 139 called The Runaway Bunny. I have mentioned it here before, and you all probably know this, but I had to mention it again today as we step into the season of Incarnation and are surrounded by the Light...the Light that pierces the darkness and as the psalmist says, "Darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day; darkness and light to you are both alike."

Every cell in our body was designed by God, God knows us better than we know ourselves. And so we walk gratefully toward the Light wrapped in the arms of the loving God, and as the little runaway bunny said, so we might say, " Shucks, I might just as well stay where I am and be your little bunny!" and the mother bunny said, "Have a carrot."