Psalm 139

“I may leave Your path, but You never leave mine. I may sleep and forget You, but You never slumber, nor fall into oblivion concerning Your creature.”

Charles spurgeon

We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito.

c.s. lewis

We must be, whether we will it or not, as near to God as our soul is to our body. This makes it dreadful work to sin; for we offend the Almighty to His face, and commit acts of treason at the very foot of His throne. Go from Him, or flee from Him we cannot: neither by patient travel nor by hasty flight can we withdraw from the all-surrounding Deity. His mind is in our mind; Himself within ourselves. His spirit is over our spirit; our presence is ever in His presence.

Charles Spurgeon

There is a kind of hate for the sinner that may coexist with pity and even a desire for their salvation.  You may hate spinach without opposing its good use. But there may come a point when wickedness is so persistent and high-handed and God-despising that the time of redemption is past and there only remain irremediable wickedness and judgment…. We will grant to the psalmist (usually David), who speaks, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, as the foreshadowed Messiah and Judge, the right personal vindictiveness.  It is a prophetic execution of what will happen at the last day when God casts all his enemies into the lake of fire.  We would do well to leave such final assessments to God and realize our own corrupt inability to hate as we ought…. Let us tremble and trust God, lest we fail, and find ourselves on the other side of the curse.

john piper

Gather Me To Be With You

Oh God, gather me now to be with you as you are with me.

Soothe my tiredness;

quiet my fretfulness;

curb my aimlessness;

relieve my compulsiveness;

let me be easy for a moment.

O Lord, release me

from the fears and guilts which grip me so tightly;

from the expectations and opinions which I so tightly grip,

that I may be open

to receive what you give,

to risking something genuinely new,

to learning something refreshingly different.

Forgive me

for claiming so much for myself

that I leave no room for gratitude;

for confusing exercises in self-importance

with acceptance of self-worth;

for complaining so much of my burdens

that I become a burden;

for competing against others so insidiously

that I stifle celebrating them

and receiving your blessing through their gifts.

O God, gather me to be with you as you are with me.