Suppose....

"Suppose" can be used as the setting up of an argument, or a belief or theory, as though you were prepared to defend it to the hilt.  Have you ever had one of those moments in time where you want to disprove someone and set up the arguments for your position with the statement, "Suppose that..."?  I think we all have at one time or another, because it is human nature to present what we believe or have perceived to see if it is really trustworthy.  In doing this, we present our side of the argument, then we await the rebuttal.  For example, we start our study of the earth with the statement, "Suppose that the earth is round, how do we keep from falling off as it rotates?"  The statement set forth is the perceived or believed fact, followed by the supposition or question.  We already are holding the truth to be true that the earth is round - now we just want to understand why we don't go flying off into space when it rotates on its axis!  Oftentimes, we find ourselves setting up various beliefs or perceptions in our conversations with God and find ourselves stuck with only half of the truth - the part we put out there as "believed fact" - then we have a whole bunch of questions or misconceptions we pose immediately after those "believed facts" because we want God to either dispel our "myths" or settle the truths we "think we believe" as fact.

Suppose I wanted to hide from you and said, “Surely the darkness will hide me. The day will change to night and cover me.” Even the darkness is not dark to you. The night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are the same. You formed the way I think and feel. You put me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because you made me in such a wonderful way. I know how amazing that was! (Psalm 139:11-14 ERV)

Here is where we find David this morning - setting up what he knows to be fact and then setting the remaining "beliefs" or "ideas" out there on the table so God can either cement them as truth to be held onto or myths he must let go of. He begins with the statement, "Suppose I wanted to hide from you..."  Now, you might think this is a fact, since I said you could begin an argument with a set of facts and follow with the questions.  In this case, he begins with the questions and ends with the facts!  In so doing, he is actually talking to himself and reminding himself of what he already knows and believes - thereby settling his questions quickly.  The question of whether he can hide from God is set forth.  I think we may have all "tried" this at one time or another, but we probably have been less than successful, as David is soon to point out.  It is impossible to hide anything from him, so I think it is laughable that we would even want to try!

Many times we try to hide what we are a little uncomfortable with, or feeling some shame over.  It is not uncommon for us to do this, because we rarely want to put our failures "on display" in life.  I recently had a friend ask me why my marriage ended.  It is not one of those things I want out there on display in my life, so unless someone asks me directly, I don't usually speak about it. Why?  It causes me a little discomfort and I find myself reliving past hurts I may have wanted to really put behind me.  It isn't that I am hiding anything in this case, but I don't put these past hurts on display because they are now totally under the blood of Jesus - they are fading scars no longer to be remembered. I kind of liken them to the scar I can barely see from when I had surgery as an infant.  There is a tell-tale sign I went through something, but it no longer is a remembered thing!

There are things we attempt to hide which are not "healed" or even "healing" things, though.  This is where I feel David is connecting with us this morning - we cannot put into the darkness anything which God has not dealt with fully yet. It is impossible for us to hide these things from his probing finger, or discovering eye.  No darkness exists with him, so he is not going to allow us to attempt to squirrel away our hurts.  Herein is love in action - not letting us "fester" on our past hurts and failures.  It may seem like the "discovery" of our past hurts and failures is a little "probing" and kind of uncomfortable, but trust me on this - any "infected" part of our lives is worse when left to "fester" in the dark!  God knows this clearly because he put all our parts, including our emotions, into place in our lives - he created us.  The idea of thinking he wouldn't understand, or that he just couldn't make anything good out of the mess we have created somehow just flies in the face of the truth of his grace and love "out-doing" anything we have done ourselves.

Most of our past hurts and failures are linked very closely to the way we think and feel.  Understanding God is the one who "put together" the very actions of thinking and the plethora of emotions we experience is liberating, because we come to recognize none of these thoughts or emotions are "foreign" to God. They are all understood by him and he knows perfectly well how they interact with each other - one feeding off the other.  Truth is, we can trust him with the stuff we want to squirrel away into the dark places in our lives - because he is already intimately familiar with them - even the bad parts we don't want to admit to or remember!  Just sayin!

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