Daily Encourager – April 18, 2020

Every day I will bless you, and praise your name forever and ever. Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; his greatness is unsearchable. – Psalm 145:2-3

To help make sure the children are good and ready to go to bed at night during our quarantine, we try to get them active after dinner.  It’s not that we need them to go to bed because they have to get up the next day, it’s that we need them to go to bed (period).  So, beyond the walking around the neighborhood, and playing in the back yard, the kids have decided that old childhood favorite, hide-and-go-seek, will get them tired enough to go to bed.  So after cleaning up dinner here we go.  Someone counts, everyone else goes and hides.  Well, I say everyone, but typically Summer just runs around and points out where everyone is hiding.  She’ll get the concept one day.

I’m sure you’ve played the game before, even if it’s been a few years. The whole point is to hide well enough not to be found, or to seek well enough that there is no good hiding place.  Of course when we get older the one whom we try to hide from the most is God, or from what God is trying to tell us about ourselves.  The psalmist’s responds to this by telling us that God “searches me and knows me…” God knows everything there is to know.  But once we are found, the game changes, we are no longer hiding, but seeking, and to that end, we read the words from today, “…his greatness is unsearchable.” 

Once we have found the glory of knowing God, or better, being known by God, we tend to want to know just how deep, high, long, and wide does God’s greatness go.  We want to know the full extent of God’s love for us.  Of course when we look inward, we know that God loves us to the our very core, that not even death would stop God’s love, nor does death stop God love.  For God so loved us that his only son died and rose again that we might know such love.

When we enter into our faith seeking to take it deeper, to become more intimate with God, what we find is the vastness to which God is involved in the whole of creation.  We begin to see God everywhere, or God at work everywhere.  Then we realize that God has always been with us as close as a breath is on our lips. So, we breathe in, knowing the grace that has come for us to wash over us, and we can’t help but breathe out praise.  For every day, with every breath we can’t help but praise the Lord.

Grace & Peace,
Sam