David was a man after God’s own Heart, well acquainted with what it meant to walk blamelessly and faithfully, as well as what it meant to succumb to destructive, momentary pleasures. He knew the joy of being able to hold his head up confidently before God, and what it meant to cower in shame and avoid figurative eye contact with God. He knew the capacity for both outcomes was inside of him, and even more than that, he knew that God saw what was inside of him. David knew what this felt like, and I believe we all can connect with that feeling as well.

What a simultaneously wonderful and terrifying thing, for God to know us! The deepest longing of our souls is to be known, but the deepest fear is for someone to truly know us and reject who we are at the core. As David authored Psalm 139, he was reflecting on this aspect of God.

He notes that God knows him and is acquainted with all his ways and with every word off his tongue before a sound is uttered. He says that God is One who protects him and created his inmost being. He is saying God knew him, and knows us, better than we’ll ever know ourselves.

As we think of Lent, we have to think of what Luke would later recount about Jesus, that at a moment in His Ministry, He set His Face towards Jerusalem and moved in the direction of the Cross. The Divine One who, in full disclosure of every detail of our life, put to rest for all Eternity any question of His Love or our worth. It leaves each of us to ask, “How could the Perfect God do this for me knowing what He knows about me?” We, like David, are left wonderfully perplexed.

So at the end of this psalm, David’s real request for God to search him is not for God to learn information He did not know, but rather to weigh what He already knows and shepherd David in the way of true life.

Prayer:
God, search my heart and show me how You want to lead it. Help me to trust that Your continued Presence in the midst of knowing the darkest parts of me proves Your Faithful Love.