kneel in wonder at heaven touching earth» God

You send the gospel to the ends of the earth

Paul Sibley — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 09:00:10 +0000

Communications technology continues to advance at a rapid pace, and at the same time, become easier to use. As a result, the world appears to be becoming a much smaller place than it once was. And in many ways that is especially highlighted by the rise in popularity of the likes of twitter and other types of social media. Some amazing statistics about social media are available on the “econsultancy blog”. Nowadays we can pass on news and hear news from all around the world in an instant. When I think back, even to my childhood, there have been massive advances in the technology available. It makes you wonder what it will be like for the coming generations.

So, because of all those advances in communications technology, it has never been easier to send a message to the ends of the earth; never easier to “send the gospel to the ends of the earth”. And I’m left wondering if we take advantage enough of the technology available to us in talking about the “good news” of Jesus Christ. And especially if I am, personally, doing enough.

I know I write this blog, and while I don’t think of myself as evangelising in my writing — that isn’t the intention — I hope I am sharing the love of Christ, the love of God, with those who read my words on here. And I know that, in theory, this blog could be read by thousands, even millions, of people. In practise, of course, it isn’t; in fact it’s around about a thousand a week. I have had to accept, because of my ongoing health concerns, that this is frequently going to be my only viable opportunity to share God’s love with other people — even this wouldn’t have been possible a few years ago.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of other websites written by people who all want to share the love of God with others from around the world. And probably an equal, or greater, number that are about evangelising and conversion. So the reality is that a great deal is being done to “send the gospel to the ends of the earth”.

But there is one thing that all of these websites, including mine, have in common. They all rely on people being interested enough to make an effort to read what’s being written; the same as with any other kind of website available on the internet. I suspect the social networking sites, such as Twitter, will begin to play a part in changing that, but even with them there still is an element of people needing to make an effort to “follow” you, or your message will just be lost within the myriad of others being sent at the same time.

So, on this Fourth Sunday of Epiphany, I’m left once again with questions. Are we, am I, doing enough to help with sending the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, to the ends of the earth?

God of heaven,
you send the gospel to the ends of the earth
and your messengers to every nation:
send your Holy Spirit to transform us
by the good news of everlasting life
in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect for The Fourth Sunday of Epiphany
is Copyright © The Archbishops Council

Our beginning and our end

Paul Sibley — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 09:00:35 +0000

This phrase, “our beginning and our end”, from today’s Collect (The Second Sunday of Epiphany), always makes me think about the book of The Revelation — the last book in our Bibles, and probably one of the most confusing.

I’m not especially confident or knowledgeable about the book of The Revelation, but there are some wonderful passages in there that really resonate with me. One such is one of our recommended readings for use at funerals, Revelation 21:1-7. It’s a reading that gives a real message of hope for the future. The words that form the link in my mind are to be found in verse six, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end”.

This is God speaking to St John in his vision, that is the book of The Revelation. As I understand it, the word translated here as “beginning” doesn’t simply mean the first point in time, but first in the sense of source of all things. And the word translated here as “end” doesn’t simply mean the end point in time, but the very goal of time, what time and life is striving to achieve. So what’s being said here is that all life begins in God and ends in God.

It’s hard to think of anything more magnificent to say about God. And at first sight it might seem to remove God to such a distance that we’re no more to him than flies on a windowpane. But the rest of verse six goes on to say, “To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.” All God’s greatness is at the disposal of humanity. “God so loved the world that he gave…” (John 3:16). The splendour of God is used to satisfy the thirst of the longing heart.

That’s the love that God has for each and every one of us. That’s the love that we’re reminded of in this prayer on this Second Sunday of Epiphany.

Eternal Lord,
our beginning and our end:
bring us with the whole creation
to your glory, hidden through past ages
and made known
in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect for The Second Sunday of Epiphany
is Copyright © The Archbishops Council

People, Look East!

Paul Sibley — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 09:00:16 +0000

I was on duty for Evensong in Godmanchester again on Sunday. We had, along with many Churches, transferred The Epiphany Sunday. It was, as it usually is, a lovely service. It was also well attended in comparison to normal — nothing to do with me of course — with double the number of people there, which was very encouraging. Anyway, here is the sermon, more or less as preached.

People, Look East!
‘Look toward the east, O Jerusalem, and see the joy that is coming to you from God.’ Baruch 4:36

Orientation
Are you one of those people who can never remember the points of the compass? Do you have to mutter to yourself, ‘West is on the left, when you’re facing north’? That’s if you can even work out which way is north!

Do you find it difficult to get yourself orientated? Ah, there’s a clue there. Oriens is, I’m reliably informed, the Latin for ‘rising’. An oriental is someone who comes from the east, where the sun rises. If it’s morning, the sun will be in the east, and in the evening in the west. Not that that would’ve helped much today — it’s been so grey you could barely see the sun.

There’s a sport called ‘orienteering’: it’s the art of making your way quickly across country with the aid of a map and a compass. Even in the days I could move quickly, I was pretty hopeless at it as a sport — it takes to long to say, ‘West is on the left, when you’re facing north’!

But, in theory, as long as you’re able to fix where one direction is — east, for example — you can get orientated.

The Middle East
In the UK we think of the people of Israel or Palestine as living in what we call ‘The Middle East’ — they think of us as ‘the near west’. For them, ‘the near east’ is Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.

In Biblical times these eastern nations were called Assyria and Persia. When the Jews were exiled to Babylon, that was in the east; when Jerusalem hoped that her exiled people would return, they were told to look east.

When Persian astrologers came to worship baby Jesus in Bethlehem — at that first Epiphany — they were called ‘wise men from the east’. And when they told Herod ‘we have seen his star in the east’ — the Orient — that could equally be translated as, ‘we have seen his star at its rising’, or even ‘in the ascendant’.

Baruch
There’s a striking phrase in the book of Baruch — which we could’ve heard from this evening, as an alternative to our Old Testament lesson from Isaiah — it says: ‘Look towards the east, O Jerusalem, and see the joy that is coming to you from God’ (Baruch 4:36).

Baruch was the name of the scribe who copied down the words of the prophet Jeremiah in around 600 BC. But the book of Baruch is in the Apocrypha, not the Old Testament, and dates from much later than Jeremiah’s time, probably about 150 BC.

It’s easy to see why it’s offered as an alternative reading for Epiphany, when we think about the wise men from the east bringing their riches to Baby Jesus.

Different cultures
There’s a real difference between the cultures of people who live in the eastern and western hemispheres. Eastern people, in general, think mystically; western people think materialistically.

Oriental philosophy’s concerned with states of being, in the West we think in terms of laws and logic. Oriental religions provide for peasants scraping a meagre living year after year from the soil, and think of time going round in an unending circle. Western religion’s for pioneers striking out to discover new frontiers, and thinks of time as a straight line.

Westerners think of Orientals as having no sense of time; Chinese and Indians pity British and North American people going round, as they put it, ‘strapped to a wristwatch’!

These are rather superficial distinctions for a very complex subject — which I certainly couldn’t really claim much genuine understanding of.

Judaism and Christianity, although they pioneered the western idea of time as progress, are in other respects basically eastern religions. Or they were, until Saint Paul and others started translating them into Greek ideas.

Never the twain shall meet?
So we of the West have much to learn from the people of the East. We’ve forgotten our traditions of mystical prayer, so that young people look to eastern religions, unaware that mysticism’s there already in Christianity.

Brooke Fosse Westcott, the author of a well respected — some would say greatest in the English language — commentary on Saint John’s Gospel, wrote that we must wait for someone from the East, who understands Saint John’s mystical outlook, to write the really definitive commentary of his Gospel.

People from the East who’ve become Christians have brought great riches of music, dance, literary form, art, and architecture, and laid them at the feet of the infant Christ.

Rudyard Kipling was only partially right when he wrote:
     Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the
          twain shall meet,
     till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great
          Judgement Seat.
In Christianity the best of eastern and western cultures have already met.

People, look east
Eleanor Farjeon wrote a great hymn, looking towards Christmas, which begins, ‘People, look East’. We need to keep our eyes fixed to the east, towards Bethlehem, where the love of God came to earth as a babe in a manger.

Perhaps we should also look further east, to that great world of oriental culture which the Persian magi brought into the Christian faith. We need to get oriented.

In Your Midst

Paul Sibley — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 09:00:58 +0000

I was on duty for Evensong in Godmanchester again on Sunday. If I were more confident with thinking on my feet, I would have probably tried to do a different sermon. I had decided to do something based on the Old Testament lesson, rather than the New Testament lesson which I most frequently preach from — don’t really know why now, yesterday’s NT lesson was the Magnificat!

About 30 minutes before the service I had an awful feeling that I was preaching the ‘wrong’ sermon — a feeling that never left me. I was a bit croaky with the singing too, which didn’t help. I just hope and pray that God will have been able to speak to people despite my presence getting in the way, especially as we had a couple of people in the congregation we don’t usually see, one who’s only just moved into Godmanchester.

Here, for what it’s worth, is the sermon more or less as preached.

In Your Midst
‘Sing and rejoice, O daughter Zion! For lo, I will come and dwell in your midst, says the Lord.’ Zechariah 2:10

Here all along
Have you ever searched for something you’d lost, and hunted all over the house, only to discover it was right there where you’d been sitting? ‘It was right here all along,’ you cry in exasperation. ‘How could I have missed it? Right under my nose!’

One particular time something like it happened to me often comes to mind, probably because it was so silly! I was doing my school homework, which rather dates it. I’d been busy writing, then stopped to read it back. When I wanted to write some more I couldn’t find my pen. I searched high and low for it, even in places it couldn’t possibly be. It was nowhere to be found.

The only thing I could do was get another pen, and use that to carry on with my homework. Next time I paused to read what I’d written, I put the pen down carefully — I didn’t want to lose another one.

When I was ready to start writing again, I took the pen I’d been chewing on out of mouth — yes, the first pen; it was, quite literally, right under my nose!

It often happens, whether you’re looking for something small or something big, that what you’re looking for has been under your nose all the time, only you didn’t see it.

People travel to oriental lands to study mysticism and meditation, and then they find that there’s a great history of these things in European Christianity, only they didn’t know about it. People travel to far-off places in search of mental peace and healing, when they could have found it by staying at home and learning to relax.

People go on pilgrimages to find somewhere where their prayers will be answered, and discover that God’s invisible presence has been with them throughout the journey. Particularly when looking for God, what we’re searching for is often found to have been here all along.

Transcendence
Yet how can this be true, we wonder? Surely God is too great and wonderful to be found in as humble a place as my home!

And it’s true. God is transcendent, higher than the highest heavens, greater than the universe he made. The nature of God passes our understanding; our little minds can’t even begin to understand his greatness.

It’s a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God, because our sinful souls would shrivel up in the light of his moral purity. The immensity of the divine is displayed by the majesty of the mountains and the distances of space.

How can we even think about a transcendent God like that, let alone speak to him?

Good to talk
Yet the astonishing thing, which the Bible reveals, is that God wants us to speak to him. We could never have guessed that if God hadn’t told us so himself.

It’s good to talk — it builds up relationships. And it’s good to talk to God, because by prayer we learn to trust him, to depend on him, and to rely on him. By prayer we learn how much God loves us, and we learn to love God in return.

But how can we pray to a God who is greater than we can even imagine? The mind boggles at our presumption in even trying to speak to a transcendent God like that. It’s a real problem.

Incarnation
So God decided to do something about it. He wants us to hold on to our belief in his transcendence. But he wants us to learn that he’s close to us, as well.

So God decided to become one of us. The immeasurable God shrank himself, smaller and smaller, until all his transcendent greatness was contained in a foetus in the womb of a young woman in Nazareth.

When that baby was born, he wasn’t some mighty prince. The Creator of the universe became an ordinary, tiny baby, without even a proper roof over his head. Astonishing!

But that was how God wanted to show us that we can talk to God, in spite of his greatness. All we have to learn to do is speak to Jesus of Nazareth, a human being like us.

If we talk to Jesus, we’re talking to God. It’s as simple as that. The transcendence and the immanence of God are brought together in the God-Man of Galilee.

In your midst
God had promised in advance that he’d do this. Think of the promise of a child who’d be born and called Emmanuel, ‘God-is-with-us’. And in the prophet Zechariah (which we heard from in our Old Testament lesson this evening): ‘Sing and rejoice, O daughter Zion! For lo, I will come and dwell in your midst, says the Lord’ (Zechariah 2:10).

We ought to have been ready for his coming. But instead we travel the globe looking for God, and scan the heavens with our telescopes hoping to find him. And God was there all along, right next to us, only we didn’t pay him any attention.

The Babe in the manger is the end of our quest. There in our midst. Only he seemed so ordinary that we didn’t even notice him.

God wants us to talk to him. And it isn’t difficult, because he’s right here listening for us to speak to him. ‘God was here all along,’ we cry in astonishment.’ How could I have missed him? Right under my nose, here in the midst of us!’

Mary waited for the birth of your Son

Paul Sibley — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 09:00:04 +0000

Today is the Fourth Sunday of Advent. Just a week to go and we’ll be celebrating, with Mary, the birth of the Christ-child. I wonder if we’re fully prepared: probably not, not here at least. I wonder if Mary was fully prepared: probably not.

I wonder what we human beings would’ve come up with, if we’d been left to arrange the birth of Jesus? Probably a committee to decide on the type of people who’d make the best parents, then a selection process and a short list until we arrived at the ideal couple. I don’t suppose an unmarried mother and her carpenter fiancé would have stood a chance. In many ways, Mary represents much that has been rejected by human beings throughout the ages. She was young, unmarried, and pregnant, and that not even by her fiancé.

At face value, the story surrounding the birth of Jesus is pretty sordid. But that’s because the God ingredient has been left out. Once the God ingredient is added to the story, everything changes. The circumstances are seen in a completely different light, and Mary, far from being the villain of the piece, is seen as the heroine. Once the God ingredient is added, there’s a total change in perceptions.

I wonder how many people at the time were aware of this change in perceptions? Fortunately Joseph, although a righteous man, was also a man open to God. He could hear God above the roaring of conventions, and so was able to respond when God suggested he move in an unconventional direction. Joseph dreamed about an angel, following which he was sure enough of himself to continue his relationship with Mary. Nothing in the circumstances had changed, only Joseph’s perceptions. But on the strength of a dream, he was prepared to accept a wife who on the face of things, may have been unfaithful to him.

The people chosen by God, and still being chosen today, to carry on his work can very often seem most unlikely. Clearly the selection criteria used by God are totally different to the selection criteria used by human beings. Somehow, God is able to see the potential within human beings long before it’s been realised, and to work with that potential.

God never rejects anyone. He uses the most unlikely people for his purposes, and works with them and through them so that their potential is realised and they change out of all recognition.

And if we, like Mary, are willing to be used by God, we only have to open our heart and mind and soul to him. God knows our potential, and will do the rest. All we human beings have to do, is to trust him and to dare to follow him.

Eternal God,
as Mary waited for the birth of your Son,
so we wait for his coming in glory;
bring us through the birth pangs of this present age
to see, with her, our great salvation
in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect for The Fourth Sunday of Advent
is Copyright © The Archbishops Council

We may be ready to receive him

Paul Sibley — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 09:00:11 +0000

Last week, in my reflection on the Collect, I talked about being prepared to meet God through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and the somewhat confusing subject of God’s judgement. This week, the Second Sunday of Advent, we have a different emphasis, and we go beyond meeting, to receiving, into our hearts, him who is our Lord and our God.

For me, one of the important things about receiving our Lord and our God into our hearts is that it’s something we do by choice. We can choose to receive God/Jesus into our hearts. And we can choose not to. And the truly amazing thing is that whichever way we decide, it won’t make an iota of difference to the way God feels about us. His love for us isn’t dependent in any way on our love for him. His love for us is a gift, freely offered, with no strings attached.

That’s the God, the Jesus, that we’re praying we’ll be ready to receive in this Collect. And it’s that love that controls everything else. We don’t need to fear the scary things like “judgement”, because our Judge is also our Saviour, and he loves us, each and every one of us, as much as if we were the only ones too love.

For us to love God in the way that he would want us to, it has to be a free choice on our part. You can’t force someone to love you, it wouldn’t be love, it could never be love.

I came across a great quote by the theologian, Greg Boyd, which I’ll finish with:

To refuse to create a world where love was possible because the risk was too great seems to be beneath God. Love is really the only reason worth creating! It’s not freedom for the sake of freedom that God values — it’s love. Freedom is simply the only possible means to this end.

Greg Boyd

Love! It’s our raison d’être.

Almighty God,
purify our hearts and minds,
that when your Son Jesus Christ comes again as
&bbsp; judge and saviour
we may be ready to receive him,
who is our Lord and our God.

Additional Collect for The Second Sunday of Advent
is Copyright © The Archbishops Council

Meet God in our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ

Paul Sibley — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 09:00:24 +0000

Today is the First Sunday of Advent, or Advent Sunday, which is the first Sunday in the Church’s liturgical year. The season of Advent takes us from today, right up until Christmas Eve. It’s a penitential season of preparation and waiting. “Advent” means “coming”, and there’s a sense of eager expectancy, as we look forward to the coming of Christ into the world at Christmas.

In this season of Advent we also celebrate the coming of Jesus into our lives daily, at our death, and at the end of the world. And this thinking about the end of the world, especially, leads us to thinking about God’s judgement.

God’s judgement of us is a subject I’m never entirely comfortable with. The differences in theology between the conservative and liberal wings of the Church just confuses me. If I’m asked for an opinion, I usually just admit that I don’t know, but am happy to leave myself to the mercy of an all-loving God, a God who I know loves me far more than I ever will myself.

I heard a story a while ago, though, that just struck a chord for me. I gather it, or something very like it, has been used as an illustration about judgement in the more evangelical Churches for many years. But coming from a somewhat more catholic tradition I hadn’t heard it before.

The story is told of a man who was taken to court to pay a £1,000 fine for a crime that he had committed. The man had no money to clear his debt and pleaded for mercy from the judge. The judge could not just let the man go free or else justice would not have been done. So he ordered that the fine of £1,000 must be paid. Then, in an act of self-sacrificing love, the judge stepped down from his chair, went to the clerk of the court, and wrote a cheque to pay the fine in full. The judge then said that because the penalty had been paid the man was free to leave the court and return home. The judge had ordered that the penalty be paid, but had then paid it himself. This illustrates both the justice and the love that God offers to each of us, by sending Jesus to pay the price and the penalty that our wrongdoing deserves.

As I said, this story really struck a chord for me. I’m not totally convinced by the idea of God sending Jesus to be punished in our place (penal substitution?). Although, once we remember that Jesus is in fact God in human form, it makes more sense. But if it helps us to feel less fearful of the judgement that must surely come — the Bible seems pretty clear on that — then it must be a good thing. Because if we’re less fearful, then perhaps we’ll be more ready to meet God in our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

Almighty God,
as your kingdom dawns,
turn us from the darkness of sin to the
light of holiness,
that we may be ready to meet you
in our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

Additional Collect for The First Sunday of Advent
is Copyright © The Archbishops Council

The Wonder of Walsingham

Paul Sibley — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 09:00:38 +0000

I have always loved Walsingham. There are quite a number of posts that have appeared on this blog in the years I’ve been writing it about the place — you can find them by clicking here. I was lucky enough to be able to go for the inside of last week, as mentioned in my last post. I wasn’t sure it was advisable with my health as it had been, but am so glad I went.

There were very few people there last week — November is outside of the main pilgrimage season — so it was even more tranquil than it is normally. But peace and quiet; time to think; and especially, time to pray, were just what I needed: and they were all there in abundance.

I know we are with God everywhere, and don’t need to go to a special place to pray. But sometimes it can help. Especially when it’s a place where thousands of other people have prayed before you. Being somewhere special like that with absolutely no time-pressure — no services to prepare for, no meals to think about, etc — can make the communion with God very special indeed. At least, that’s what I found last week.

Even without the pilgrimage activities there are several regular acts of corporate worship each day: Mass is celebrated three times at various places within the shrine complex; and Evening Prayer and Shrine Prayers, both in the shrine church. I joined in with some, though not all, of that regular round of worship. But it was the time alone with God that was particularly special last week.

I spent much of that time alone upstairs in the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, in front of the Tabernacle (pictured below) where the Sacrament is constantly reserved. It’s a lovely place to sit, and probably one of the most comfortable places to sit for any length of time in the shrine church. It’s also a place that very few tourists visit — not that there were many around anyway. Another place I spent a great deal of time, was in the Chantry Chapel of the Guild of All Souls (pictured bottom). Again, it was somewhere to find peace and solitude. It was wonderful to just sit and ‘be’ with God; not worrying about what words to use, or that I should be somewhere else.

When I went away, I knew I had a lot to think and pray about, especially around my future ministry. I did spend some time thinking and praying those things; but mostly I just spent time ‘being’ with God, and just let my thoughts and prayers wander wherever they would. I don’t think there’s any coincidence in the two places I felt most drawn to, and spent the most time in. And, I think, I have a clearer understanding of some changes that could be made — more about that later perhaps: there is still much to assimilate, and conversations to be had.

One thing I am sure of, this blog has an important role in my future. The blog holiday was necessary because of the really bad patch I had with my health. The blog may change and evolve a little, but don’t we all as we journey through life. But I’m determined that it will still be here.

I learned a lot about myself last week in Walsingham, and think I fell in love with the place a little more. As much as I love to go in pilgrimage season, and join in all the activities, I suspect an out-of-season-Walsingham will be a destination again in the future — funds permitting.

May we trust in your mercy and know your love

Paul Sibley — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 08:00:23 +0000

Sometime around the middle of the nineteenth century, Frederick Faber wrote the hymn, “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy”. That would have been soon after he converted from Anglicism to Catholicism, and founded what was to become the Brompton Oratory in Kensington. Before that he’d spent a couple of years as Rector of the Parish of Elton, in Huntingdonshire, which isn’t far from where I live.

It’s a wonderful hymn. When you read the words you can understand the sentiment of William Wordsworth, when he wrote to Faber after he’d decided to take Holy Orders, “I do not say you are wrong, but England loses a poet”. It’s thought that he wrote this, along with others he wrote, to try and increase the importance of hymn singing in the Catholic Church; he’d always been impressed by the power of hymns in the Protestant tradition.

This hymn says, far better than I ever could, what I would want to say about today’s Collect — The Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity. Please, read the words, take them to heart, and trust in their truth.

There’s a wideness in God’s mercy
Like the wideness of the sea;
There’s a kindness in his justice,
Which is more than liberty.

There is no place where earth’s sorrows
Are more felt than up in heaven;
There is no place where earth’s failings
Have such kindly judgement given.

For the love of God is broader
Than the measure of man’s mind;
And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind.

But we make his love too narrow
By false limits of our own;
And we magnify his strictness
With a zeal he will not own.

There is plentiful redemption
In the blood that has been shed;
There is joy for all the members
In the sorrows of the Head.

There is grace enough for thousands
Of new worlds as great as this;
There is room for fresh creations
In that upper home of bliss.

If our love were but more faithful,
we should take him at his word;
and our life would be thanksgiving
for the goodness of the Lord.

Frederick William Faber (1814-1863)

You can discover much more about Frederick William Faber on the Diocese of Ely website.

Merciful God,
your Son came to save us
and bore our sins on the cross:
may we trust in your mercy
and know your love,
now and in all our days;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect for The Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity
is Copyright © The Archbishops Council

You search us and know us

Paul Sibley — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 08:00:20 +0000

I really like the psalms. When we read them, and especially when we worship with them, we are connecting with people who have done the same since well before the time of Jesus. In fact, Jesus himself, would’ve used the psalms as a part of his worship experience in the synagogues. I have many favourites amongst the psalms, they’ll vary according to how I’m feeling at the time. But one that is always close to the top of the list, is Psalm 139. Here are the first six verses:

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 far away.
You search out my path and my lying down,
   and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
   O Lord, you know it completely.
You hem me in, behind and before,
   and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
   it is so high that I cannot attain it.

In some ways it can be quite a disconcerting thought, to think that God knows each of us so intimately. We can’t lie to God; he already knows the truth. He does, in fact, know us far better than we will ever know ourselves. He knows all about our daily lives, when we sit, and when we rise. He knows all our ways, our mannerisms and character traits, our motives and goals. He even knows what we’re going to say and think, even before we do. That can be a disconcerting thought indeed.

But it can be a comforting thought too. We don’t have to put on airs and graces or pretend with God; he already knows us. We don’t have to try and be the person we think others want us to be; he already knows who we really are. It’s the real person deep down inside that God wants, and calls into his service.

Despite him knowing us so intimately, knowing all the bad things in our lives and character as well as the good, already knowing the things about us that we’re ashamed of, as well as those we’re proud of, he still loves us. God loves the real us, the real me — warts and all!

It’s because of that love that we can rely on him in strength, and rest on him in weakness.

Almighty God,
you search us and know us:
may we rely on you in strength
and rest on you in weakness,
now and in all our days;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect for The Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity
is Copyright © The Archbishops Council