By: Carole L. Haines

Lord, You have searched me and known me.
² You know when I sit down and when I get up;
You understand my thought from far away.
³ You scrutinize my path and my lying down,
And are acquainted with all my ways.
⁴ Even before there is a word on my tongue,
Behold, Lord, You know it all.
⁵ You have encircled me behind and in front,
And placed Your hand upon me.
⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
It is too high, I cannot comprehend it.
(Psalm 139:1-6 NASB)

It’s so hard to turn it all off. Surrounded by flashing screens, moving traffic, noises of the day. I think that’s why I like the night so much. The traffic has stopped, the lights are off, the world’s asleep. We were supposed to be able to see the Northern Lights this weekend, but the clouds obscured our view. Finally last night there was a break in the clouds, but when I went out to check three times, there was still too much light, too much atmospheric noise, even cloudless I could not see.

And isn’t life like that so often. We make our plans, we pack our bags, and it rains on our camping trip. But God is in the disappointments too. God is not just in the good times, He is in the detours, the dead-end roads, the four-point turn arounds. It really bothers me when we’re on a drive and we come to a road we’ve never been on before and decide to explore it, only to find it’s a dead end. No way through, nothing to do but turn around.

And yet some of the prettiest roads I’ve ever found have dead ended at a river crossing, or meandered to the edge of a mountain so high and rugged, they didn’t even bother building a road over it. We even found the last ferry crossing in Maryland by accident and paid our five dollars to drive on to the ferry and crossed over to Virginia by boat.  God is winnowing our path. He scrutinizes it. God is in the good, the bad and the unexpected.
³ You scrutinize my path and my lying down,
And are acquainted with all my ways.
⁵ You have encircled me behind and in front,
And placed Your hand upon me.

To scrutinize is to spread out our path before us, to examine it thoroughly, to winnow it. I just love that picture of God’s all-encompassing care, even in the difficulties. Have you ever asked God,
“Why is this happening? What did I do wrong to deserve this?”
We can get so confused by unexpected dead-end roads, detours and disappointments. I have asked God those questions when in the most perplexing times of my life. His answers have always been a gentle correction of my obscured view of what He is accomplishing in and through me, even in the confusion and pain of the unexpected. We live in a broken world, but because of Jesus, we can be made whole amid all the broken pathways, re-directs and gentle corrections.
What would we ever do without this God of ours whose faithfulness is new every morning, whose love never ends, whose heart is always drawing us nearer to Himself. Rest in Him dear believer, rest in His care for you. Turn it all off and sit in the dark of a sleepless night, handing all your cares over to the one who cares for you in the good, the bad and the unexpected things of life.