No one Knows us Better than God : Psalm 139
A story of a fictitious person, Desmond, and his walk in the countryside with God, where he discovered the holy truths of Psalm 139
It was a mid-winter morning when Desmond left his village for the local countryside.
His boots crunched on the frosty lane as he walked past hedgerows that were now bare. Tangled leafless branches hung from the trees and contrasted starkly against the pale sky.
He pulled his scarf tighter thinking; ‘Here I am, out of sight, away from the noise. Perhaps here I can now be alone?’
But the stillness whispered in return: ‘You have searched me and you know me’.
‘Not just humanity in general, but you, Desmond’, the silence whispered; ‘with your own particular concerns, quirks, and unspoken thoughts’.
So God’s knowledge, he thought, was not a wide sweep; it was intimate knowledge, sharper than any friend’s, deeper than any family’s.
Desmond climbed a stile and crossed into an open pasture. Sheep grazed in the distance, their breath rising like smoke.
The ground was uneven, but every step felt traced, as if the path had already been marked out before he set foot on it.
Words came to his mind; ‘Before a word is on my tongue, You know it completely.’
He smiled at the thought — it’s not about surveillance then, but rather companionship.
Even the words he hadn’t yet dared to say were already understood.
No colleague, no neighbour, no one else could know him like that.
Further on, the path dipped into a wood. A canopy of branches closed overhead, and the light thinned.
For a moment, he felt the old unease: ‘What if the darkness swallows me?’
But then he noticed how shafts of sunlight pierced through gaps in the branches, turning the shadows into patterns rather than threats.
He then understood this as ‘Even the night will shine like the day’ –
Psalm 139 was not just a theory then, Desmond thought.
And it was not just about people in general — it was about his, Desmond’s own darkest nights, his own shadows, his own fears.
He paused by a stream, water running quickly and clearly over stones.
He thought of beginnings — of being knitted together in his mother’s womb in secret, of his days being already written of before they came to be.
The stream had carved its course long before he stood beside it, yet he noticed how the water still ran clear and fresh.
Desmond paused there and shared his new realisations with God;
‘You know me inside and out, and every bone in my body; You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit, how I was sculpted from nothing into something’.
‘Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth; all the days of my life were spread out before you, everything prepared for me, from before I’d even been born.’
‘You know me better than my parents know me, better than my closest friend, better even than I know myself.’
As he turned back towards the village, the church spire just visible above the roofs, Desmond whispered the psalm’s closing prayer:
‘Search me, O God, and know my heart.’ This was not a plea of fear, but of trust.
The countryside had taught him what Psalm 139 had always promised: that God’s knowledge is not general but personal, not distant but intimate.
Desmond finally understood that he was known by God, individually, uniquely, and completely.
And that being known in this way, was not confinement, rather the ultimate freedom — and the way to everlasting life.
