The Surrounding Nature of God

I think about the hiding place within the Lord today. I'm reading Psalm 32--David's teaching psalm (a maskil)--and I'm enthralled by this concept of the surrounding nature of God. The psalm declares to God:

You are my hiding place;
you will protect me from trouble
and surround me with songs of deliverance.
I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
I will counsel you with my loving eye on you.

And a few verses later, I read how "the Lord's unfailing love surrounds the one who trusts in him."

When I sit alone in my bedroom and look out as the morning sun filters through the Weeping Cherry, I imagine myself hidden in this great thicket of God's embrace. How strange to consider the spiritual reality that we are inside of God somehow. How wonderful to understand that we are enclosed in a space bordered by songs. How secure to know that, here, God teaches us with His loving eye on us.

With His loving eye on us!

Later, in church, I turn to Exodus 23:20 and read an astonishing mystery. God says, "Behold, I am going to send an angel before you to guard you along the way and to bring you into the place which I have prepared."

I think about this God--this surrounding, singing, teaching, watching God, this God who sends angels, this God who guards us along the way--and I feel a different kind of joy and peace rise up within me.

David wrote the psalm to teach us this mystery: we can access the secret hiding place within God. His unfailing love surrounds us, and we can move about our ordinary days with this deep joy and peace.

I imagine in the chaos and rubble that a song and an angel surrounds everything about this moment.