134th Meditation
“If I scale the heavens you are there,
if I lie descend to Sheol, there you are.
If I speed away on the wings of the dawn,
if I dwell beyond the ocean,
even there your hand will be guiding me,
your right hand holding me fast” (Ps 138:8-10).
Together with the psalmist, we praise the omnipresence of our Father, before whom nothing is hidden and with whom the whole earth is filled.
How great is the promise derived from this verse of the psalm: God’s loving presence is always with us! His eyes rest on us without ceasing. To those who walk in His ways He looks with favor and strengthens them; to those who do not yet know Him or who have gone astray He looks with eyes of mercy, so that they may recognize Him and turn to Him.
When we live consciously in the presence of God, everything is different. Our focus changes, and so our Father can grant us for our life that security which is grounded in His steadfast love, which even in the darkest hours will sustain us.
“If I say, ‘Let the darkness cover me, and the night wrap itself around me,’ even darkness to you is not dark, and night is as clear as the day” (Ps 138:11-12).
Even in the midst of the shadows that may have fallen on people’s lives, God’s light has not been extinguished; rather, it continues to shine and to call people to conversion. The Father wants all humankind to become aware of His loving presence. He excludes no one, least of all those who “live in darkness and the shadow dark as death” (Lk 1:79).
The Son of God descended into the darkness of sin and alienation from God, and transformed man’s greatest atrocity -the crucifixion of the Son of God- into a source of salvation and love. Everyone can come to this fountain and drink true life from it. They only have to convert and accept the love of our Heavenly Father.
Then everything is transformed. Even the darkness in which man lived is no longer darkness for God, because He Himself descended into it and the darkness must yield to the light of our Father.