That untouchable, un-sharable part of ourselves

My big takeaway after transcribing the big, fat 119th Psalm

May 01, 2025

Well, I did it, folks. I made my way through the Bible’s longest Psalm, transcribing it verse by verse in the early morning hours in my (often) illegible scrawl.

As I’ve shared learnings from Psalm 119 sporadically here on Things I Wrote Down, I’ve enjoyed the notes and conversation I’ve had with many of you about these ancient words. Thanks for coming a long for the ride!

Here are a few takeaways from my sixth and final session, as I transcribed verses 137-176. I hope you’ve enjoyed this series of reflections.

There’s something about the morning

What strange things we are, time-bound creatures thrown into a world not of our own making. A verse I’ve been on chewing lately is from another Psalm. It sends chills down my spine, and it’s the epigraph I plan to use to frame the new fiction series I’m writing (when it goes to print):

The heavens are the LORD’s heavens
But the earth he has given to human beings

Ps. 115:16

I feel this intently after the whirlwind weeks of campaign for the latest federal election in Canada which came to a surprising end early this week. The schemes of politicians, the rancour and noise, as women and men vie for power to wield for good and perhaps for evil is constant.

But it’s so fleeting. Think of how our former Prime Minister dominated almost every news headline around politics for the better part of a decade. Then poof! Within a month he’s forgotten. At least gone from the headlines.

It’s a real record scratch observation. The antics of earth—wonderful and wild as they are—first, are given. Secondly, they are the appetizer, not the meal. And they are fleeting.

Your righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, David seems to shout from the page back in Psalm 119:142. The eternal nature and quality of God’s unchanging character which David rattles off—righteous, faithful, everlasting, true1— orient us in a world captured by competing kingdoms. A world with real foes. A world with trouble and anguish (143).

And in this fleeting world, under the banner of the eternal heavens, a world in which both heaven and earth collide as God comes down and the heart is drawn up, there’s something about the morning.

David rises before dawn, watches in the night

David seems to be in constant meditation mode. Perhaps he’s a helpful case study for us of that impossible exhortation by Paul to “pray without ceasing” in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 in which we’re invited into a perpetual conversation with God.

One of my popular plays on Skit Guys (If God Had a Facebook Account, What Would He Write on Your Wall) unpacks if this is really possible. Ceasing? Like, always? Us modern digital creatures answer the questions with our ceaseless online habits everyday.

I’m fascinated by his habit of meditation “before each watch of the night” (148). Like the Greeks and Romans, the Jewish people divided the night into military watches. At these times, sentinels were on the lookout, alert on the walls of cities for any herald or enemy. In David’s lifetime, there were three watches divided into four hour chunks of time: from sunset to 10 pm; from 10 pm to 2 am; from 2 am to sunrise.2

How interesting to view prayer and meditation in these terms. As a lookout. A careful eye on our surroundings. As a stance to proactively guard against enemy attack. To wait and look for any herald or message from an ally.

Other great heroes of the Bible prayed, meditated, and attacked during these watches. Gideon’s small army of men who lapped up water like dogs saw supernatural victory during the middle watch (see Judges 7:19).

It was all through the terrible night that Hebrew families huddled by the shores of a sea with an enemy army behind them. The waters began to part as a strong wind blew when Moses stretched out his hand, waters that divided so the great exodus from slavery into freedom could occur. Redemption unfolded with each step on dry ground, then:

During the last watch of the night the Lord looked down from the pillar of fire and cloud at the Egyptian army and threw it into confusion (Exodus 14:24).

If this big, fat Psalm teaches us anything, it teaches us to wake. To cry out. At any time. David models this authentically for us.

What does David do in the early hours? He cries to God for help. He petitions heaven. He puts hope in God’s word. He meditates (147-149). The entire Psalm is a workshop on how we can pray and meditate at any hour, especially in the quiet pockets of time we can find. As a busy dad, husband, and creative, I understand why the early morning or middle of the night makes sense. (Name all your roles here _____________________. I’m sure you understand this too!)

Jeremiah later takes up this all-hours invitation and calls people of faith to do the same:

Arise, cry out in the night, at the beginning of the night watches! Pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord! Lift your hands to him for the lives of your children, who faint for hunger at the head of every street. (Lamentations 2:19, emphasis added).

It’s cool to see great people of faith model similar behaviour. If you’re an early morning person, or a night owl, you should be encouraged. Every time and any time is a good time to converse with God or meditate.

How to meditate and pray like David

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been both challenged and encouraged as I’ve slowed down to spend time in Psalm 119 by what prayer and a life with God is really like. David demonstrates for us what relationship with God is.

It’s intimate, personal. It’s a negotiation. Prayer is an ongoing conversation, often internal. It’s not always formal but there’s some ceremony and flourish. It’s a fight, sometimes, to believe. The constant declarations of basic, inherent truths—the announcements of God’s eternal qualities—bring lens-focusing clarity on the reality of God’s character to build up faith, like an optometrist brings everything into focus for someone with blurry-eyed vision.

Relationship with God is honest. It acknowledges all the things: the faith and the failings, the desires and the frustrations, the red-hot anger, suffocating fears, and the unspeakable passions, too. Take a moment to read the passage from verses 156-175, for example. This is a total barrage of desperate appeal, flattery, stress, sober self judgment, pleas and bargaining.

Walking with God is bringing your whole self before him. To seek and find wholeness and peace.

Then, suddenly, it ends

As I close out these reflections on Psalm 119, it’s cool to realize that the very practice of waking early with coffee to read the passages, pulling out a pen and writing the words down, has been a form of meditation. Typing out the thoughts and revisiting the words right here in the last watch of the night is a modern digital meditation.

Then it suddenly ends. The Psalm, that is.

“I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek out your servant,” David admits as he closes this long verse (176). Here we have Luke’s gospel message before Christ is ever born. After all the pleas, reflection, truth-telling, meditation, David simply needs a rescuer and saviour able to find, help, protect, and locate him in all the darkness and danger of life.

A lost sheep that remembers God’s word.

As I zoom out and think about my takeaways from transcribing this Psalm, the incredible sweetness of the private, personal relationship to God stands out to me. David’s private prayer life and public writings show us what his way with God looks like.

But it’s his way. On display to encourage us. And it does encourage me. Our adult selves try to control and shape the wet slab of clay that is our life to make sense and form it (as we well should).

This Psalm helps to remind us that the main thing we can shape is our self. That’s what we have. Our personhood.

We have public personas and have to show up in the world with all its systems and expectations. But there’s an untouchable, un-sharable part of ourselves that only God can know, and only we can experience with him. What that thing is like bubbles up in our lives—the choices we make, the communities we show up in, the friends we have, the things we say out loud and write down, the decisions we make.

What an incredible mystery to consider and to live out, day after day.

Live, friends. And as you do, be yourself. Especially with God.

Amen.

Throwaway thought:

Have you ever found loose change on a playground. A couple quarters. Maybe a loonie or twoonie (Canada’s 1 and 2 dollar coins). I have, and I love the feeling. Found money in unexpected places is such a thrill.

“I rejoice at your word like one who finds great spoil” (162). I love this image.