Peek-A-Boo

“O Lord, You have probed me and You know me; You know when I sit and when I stand, you understand my thoughts from afar. My journeys and my rest you scrutinize. Even before a word is on my tongue, Lord you know it all. Psalm 139: 1-4

How intimate our God is with us! He is not some God so far away that He doesn’t participate in our daily lives. No. Our God is up close and personal. As we read the scripture it says, “Lord, you have probed me and you know me,” and “My journeys and my rest you scrutinize.”

Probing and scrutinizing are very intentional action words. Probing means to dig deep and discover information about someone that they don’t want you to know. Scrutinizing means to examine or inspect closely and thoroughly, paying close attention to minute details. That’s what God does with us. God knows every part of us. He knows our thoughts so nothing is hidden from Him. Yet often we falsely believe what we think, say, and do are not seen by God.

It reminds me of a little child playing a game of Peek-A-Boo. When the child covers their eyes, they think their parent cannot see them. They believe they are hiding. Then they take their hand away from their eyes. They smile because they now see the parent and believe the parent can now see them. They believe they are no longer hidden. The parent just sits back smiling, watching, and seeing the child the entire time.

We are that little child playing Peek-A-Boo with God. We put our hands over our eyes and believe we are hidden. We then act as though God can’t see us or see what we do. The result of this is two-fold.

First, in our humanness, we behave according to what we want to do, and we don’t see what God wants us to do. We convince ourselves that what we do has no consequences. We think that this has no effect on our relationship with God and we will talk with Him when we decide to do so. This is not true. The more we follow our will, the more we separate ourselves from our relationship with God. We no longer seek to see Him. We think we will talk time to with Him, but often we don’t. Our relationship with God becomes distant making it more difficult for us to share our intimate thoughts and feelings with God.

Second, we think because we can’t see God, He doesn’t really know us. That He is distant from us. But that is also not true. Like the parent watching the child, God sits and watches us. He sees us. He knows all that we think and sees all that we do. He never takes His eyes off us because He loves us. In His beautiful gaze, He probes us and scrutinizes us. When we remove our hands and look at God, He tells us what He sees in us. He tells us all the things He knows about us. He gushes over us with love and tells us all the good He sees in us. He corrects us lovingly when He sees us going in a direction away from Him. And never once does He leave us because He intimately loves us just like the parent who never leaves the child even though the child can’t see him or her.

I find an overwhelming sense of joy in knowing that God knows me so intimately. He knows everything about me. He sees the good in me and the not-so-good, yet He never leaves my side. He beckons me to take away the hand from my eyes. He wants us to glance into each other’s eyes and smile at one another. He wants me to share every intimate detail with Him even though He already knows it. And when I share everything with Him, He laughs with me in the joyful times. He cries with me in sad times. He comforts me in difficult times. And I fall more in love with Him because He probes me and scrutinizes me.

Today, let us remove our hands from our eyes and gaze into God’s eyes. Let us remember how intimately God knows and loves us. Let us strive to probe and scrutinize God so that we know Him as intimately as He knows us.

© 2023 Kendall Berry Lasseigne