To be known completely is rarer than a blue moon event. Increasing social media and cell phone use should make it easier, but many claim greater feelings of isolation and disconnect than ever before.

Stephen Marche, writer for The Atlantic, adeptly explains.
“We are living in an isolation that would have been unimaginable to our ancestors, and yet we have never been more accessible. Over the past three decades, technology has delivered to us a world in which we need not be out of contact for a fraction of a moment. In 2010, at a cost of $300 million, 800 miles of fiber-optic cable was laid between the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange to shave three milliseconds off trading times. Yet within this world of instant and absolute communication, unbounded by limits of time or space, we suffer from unprecedented alienation. We have never been more detached from one another, or lonelier. In a world consumed by ever more novel modes of socializing, we have less and less actual society. We live in an accelerating contradiction: the more connected we become, the lonelier we are. We were promised a global village; instead we inhabit the drab cul-de-sacs and endless freeways of a vast suburb of information.”

Why is this happening? Could it be that our expanding social media arena has created many more opportunities for us to display a false or selective “front” to the world? With careful planning and actions, a person’s ability to deceive others is almost limitless behind a computer screen

Thank God for Psalm 139! In it, the writer speaks of a God who is intimately knowledgeable of our every move and thought, despite what we might want to project.

Here are some excerpts.

“O Lord, you have searched me and have known me. You know my down sitting and uprising; You understand my thoughts afar off. You sift and search out my path and my lying down, and You are acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word on my tongue (still unuttered), but behold, O Lord, You know it altogether.” Verses 1-4

Part of the Psalm reflects on the continual presence of God no matter where we are. He is the ultimate “network” before there was a network!

“If I ascend to heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in the depths (the place of the dead) behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the dawn or dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall Your hand lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me. If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me and the night shall be the only light about me, even the darkness hides nothing from You, but the night shines as day; the darkness and the light are both alike to You.” Verses 8-11

The Psalm also tells how it is impossible to “run” from God. Can a created “thing,” formed and intimately known by its Creator/God, ever truly run (escape) from God?

“For You did form my innermost parts; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I will confess and praise You (for You are fearful and wonderful) and for the awful wonder of my birth! Wonderful are Your works and that (fact) my inner self knows quite well. My frame was not hidden from You when I was being formed in secret and intricately and curiously wrought (as if embroidered with various colors) in the depths of the earth (a region of darkness and mystery.) Verse 13-15

And for those who feel lonely, the most comforting reflection in this Psalm speaks of God’s planning for us.

“Your eyes saw my unformed substance, and in Your book all the days of my life were written before they ever took shape, when as yet there were none of them. How precious and weighty are Your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I could count them, they would be more in number than the sand…” Verse 16, 17

To be truly known by others may be a blue moon event, but in the nature of God, it is a glorious routine!

My Prayer
Wow God! What a good stalker you are. I praise and thank you for Your perfect attentiveness toward the mixed up, misled person I am prone to be. Watch me, catch me, and mesh me to Yourself so that the “me” in me is more like You. Thank You that I am not alone. You are here. Amen