Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18
1 O LORD, you have searched me and known me.
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away.
3 You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue, O LORD, you know it completely.
5 You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.
13 For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.
17 How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
18 I try to count them — they are more than the sand; I come to the end — I am still with you.
This Sunday we will be discussing a Psalm, a song to God, the glorious psalmist that attempts to put words on the unknowable, infinite. We hopefully, can take some time to fathom the limitless and contrast it with the limited. We each carry with us a self, ego, persona; whatever you want to call it, for our time let us consider it the False Self. In the light of our own constructed and developed over our lives False self let’s consider the Self of God, Higher Power, Cosmic Consciousness within each of us. How do we identify the False Self? How do we look honestly at its impact on our daily lives? How does the False Self cut us off from or block us from the Infinite or True Self?
Lots of questions to carry into the New Year, into a new phase in this community and maybe with each other’s help some understanding of who we are and where we want to go. Our community stands at a crossroads. We can rise up to the challenge and move into a community of awareness, growth and collective reality or we can stay with what we know, what we feel comfortable with and that which feeds the False Selves we bring with us into the New Year. Each day, each week we face decisions and choices. Within this uncertain, maybe luminous space our decisions shape who we are,who we want to be and where God is in the mix. See ya Sunday. Live long and prosper.
Alan Stephenson