Someone Always Sees

“You have searched me and know me!”

Psalm 139:1

It always boggled my mind.  How was it that my parents always seemed to know it when I had done something wrong?  They could even at times anticipate the dumb thing I was thinking about doing.  I couldn’t hide anything from them.  Well now that I am a parent, I understand. One reason they seemed to know was that they had been kids too. There wasn’t anything I was going to try that they hadn’t tried.  However, the main reason was that parents have a network of informants.  Their network is wide ranging – their friends, your teachers, your friend’s parents, and yes even your siblings.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was one of my parent’s informants.  When my sisters would have friends over, I was often sent down into the basement with them, to let them know what was happening.  This is all part of a very important lesson my parents tried to teach me – “You can’t hide anything,” they’d say. “Someone who knows you will always see you. You will get caught. Someone always sees.

After all, even if we can hide things from each other, we can’t hide from God. God always sees!  That message of Psalm 139.  O Lord, you have searched me and known me!  You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar.  You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it. Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence?   If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.

There is nothing that you or I do or say or even think that He doesn’t know.   He is acquainted with all our ways.  He knows the evil we are thinking about saying or doing before a word is even on our tongues.  That’s our parents really secret.  When they told us, “Someone always sees” this is what they were trying to tell us. This is how they knew we would get caught.  Even if you can hide what you are doing from everyone else, you can’t hide it from God.  He will put someone there to see you… I have a good friend from College whose husband was cheating on her.  He kept it hidden for a long time. But then one day he and this other woman had a car accident. No one got hurt physically but he got caught. Someone always sees because He always sees!

Believe it or not there is great comfort in this truth.  For one thing, God loves us too much to allow us to keep walking down paths that lead away from him… that end up hurting us and the people around us. He cared too much about that wife to allow her to keep living with the unknown, with the doubts about her marriage she couldn’t explain.  And he loved that man too much to allow him to continue down that path.  He wants more than anything to forgive us our sins.  But before we will be open to His forgiveness we need to see the miserable truth of our sin.  So, He brings us face to face with our sin.  He makes sure we get caught. Even though that moment of getting caught is terribly shaming and painful, you need have no doubt that God’s chief desire is to forgive.  After all, He gave His own Son.  over to death for our sins and raised Him to life that we might be made right with God.

The comfort doesn’t end there.  The fact that God always sees means He is paying attention to you.  Think of the words of the Psalm.  You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. He knows what’s happening.  He knows what’s coming.  You are never all by Yourself.  He sees.  He is with you.  One woman whose marriage was falling apart, tells the story of one morning when she was in complete despair.  She felt alone and forgotten.  That morning she turned over one of the scripture cards she kept at the kitchen table.  The text that morning?  “In my distress I cried out to the LORD and the LORD heard my cry.”  “I see God was saying to her.  “You are not alone.  I am here.”

 If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.  This is a Psalm I like to use when praying with people.  Sometimes they are worried because they don’t understand what’s happening.  Sometimes they are sick and the doctor doesn’t know what is wrong.  What comfort to know that the God who loved us enough to give His own son for us knows what is going on.  What peace there is in knowing that even there His hand will guide us.  When people go in for surgery they are often scared – scared about the surgery, scared about the anesthesia.  Even there God’s right hand holds us fast.  Remember who sits at God’s right hand – Jesus!  The hands that hold you are the nail scared hands of the Savior who loves you.  The hands that hold you are the powerful living hands of your Savior Jesus who conquered death.  It makes me think of the story of a father and his little two year old in a swimming pool.  They start in the shallow end and move deeper. Each step the water rises higher.  The father chants “Deeper and Deeper and Deeper” the little guy holds on tighter.  The reality is that little boy is just as safe in the deep end as he was in the shallow end.  In both places His dad is holding him.  That’s us – whether in the shallow end enjoying life’s pleasures, or in the deep end of life’s troubles – the same God is always watching us… the same God is always holding us… He always sees.  Amen.