There's No Place You Could Hide From My Love

(Psalm 139)

Before you had a name,
before anyone had seen your face,
God knew you.

He knew the shape of your hands.
He knew the sound of your laugh,
even the laughs still waiting inside you.

When you were so small
that no one could see you at all,
hidden away in the warm dark,
God was already there.
He was knitting you together,
one tiny thread at a time:
your fingers and your toes,
the little dip at the bottom of your spine.

He smiled while he made you.
He thought,
There has never been anyone like this one.
And there never will be again.

Now you are here.
And there is no place you could go
where he would not be waiting,
glad to see you.

If you climbed up, up,
past the clouds, past the moon,
past the farthest star,
he would be there.

If you went down, down,
into the deepest, darkest dark,
where you couldn't see your own hand,
he would be there too.
Do you remember the singer
who called for help from the very bottom of things?
God heard him even there.
The dark is not dark to him.
He would see you,
the way you see in daytime.

If you woke before the sun
and ran to the far side of the sea,
faster than the morning light,
even there
his hand would reach to hold you.
Even there
his hand would not let go.

Sometimes you wonder
if anyone could know all of you,
the inside parts,
the cross feelings and the worried ones,
the things you have never told anyone,
and want you still.

God knows you all the way through.
Every thought before you think it.
Every word before you say it.
He knows you down to the very bottom,
and he is not afraid of what he finds.
He loves you.
He loves you as if you were the only one,
his favorite,
his most precious treasure in the whole wide world.
And he loves every one of his children
exactly that much.

The man who first sang this song
felt that love and could only say,
It is too wonderful. I cannot hold it all.

He was right.
And there was more of that love still on its way
than he could yet see.

Because one day, that same love
would not stay up among the stars.
It would come down.
Down past the clouds and the moon.
Down into our dark.
Love with a face, and hands, and a name.
Jesus,
come all the way down
to find you,
to take your hand,
and never, ever let go.