Where can I flee?
Where can I go then from your spirit
Or 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 shall lead me
Your right hand hold me fast Psalm 139 v 6-9
Where I spent my childhood, there was a Catch 22 with which we delighted in threatening each other. ‘Do you think God wants you to be a nun?’ was the question. If you said ‘yes’, that was one way to cook your goose, but if you said ‘no’ then the response was that you were doomed, because we all knew that the more vehemently people denied God’s call the more certain it was that they were going to get caught eventually, vide Augustine. It doesn’t say much for our perception of a life dedicated to God’s service and even less for our understanding of God. My reading of Psalm 139 then had that same sense of the remorselessness of God in his pursuit of me, his burrowing into my being, the inescapability of his judgement. It is not a nice feeling.
It is a source of wonder that my sense of the divine survived long enough for me to be able to read this psalm with joy. I suppose, in a way, it is the equivalent of that Catch 22, in that no matter how much I flirted with lack of faith, engaged with atheism, scorned the nonsensical beliefs of my childhood and excoriated the deeds done in the name of religion, the divine was there patiently waiting for me. I could never deny the truths I found behind the poetry of this glorious psalm. It is a mighty paean of praise to the God who is everywhere and in everything and with us in every atom of our being and every flicker of our soul. The notion of riding on the wings of the morning safe in the right hand of God is exhilarating. This psalm tells us that the divine is in us and we are with the divine from the time when we were ‘made in secret and woven in the depths of the earth’ and will be with us when we make the grave our bed.