HE KNOWS MY NAME

I just got back from a fun dinner with Joy and Lennie at Sbarro.
But before that, I had fun watching tonight's rehearsal with Tommy Walker and his team for tomorrow's worship concert. It's pretty amazing to finally meet the man who wrote some of my favorite worship songs.

Although tonight was the first time I met him, Tommy Walker is a frequent visitor to the Philippines. In fact, one of his songs found its inspiration from the slums of Manila when a young kid came up to him during a ministry time and asked, "I'm just a kid in the slums, do you think Jesus knows me?" That little experience inspired the birthing of the song He Knows My Name. Presbyterian theologian, Robert McAfee Brown wrote a personal statement of faith one time in which he said that “there are little moments when vast things happen.” That little moment for that kid God showed His vastness.

I believe some of the kids who were rehearsing for a dance number tonight came from the slums and are products of his church's (Christian Assembly Los Angeles) ministry to the poor of Payatas, Metro Manila's largest slum area.

Tommy Walker with some of our Chancel Choir members

Incidentally, this morning, as I began my day, I read Psalm 139-- one of the many Psalms that teach us about the amazing attributes of God- Omnipresence, Omniscience and Omnipotence.

Theologian Paul Tillich in a sermon taught that we all know that we cannot separate ourselves at any time from the world to which we belong. There is no ultimate privacy or final isolation. We are always held and comprehended by something that is greater than we are, that has a claim upon us, and that demands response from us. The most intimate motions within the depths of our souls are not completely our own. For they belong also to our friends, to mankind, to the universe, and to the Ground of all being, the aim of our life. Nothing can be hidden ultimately. It is always reflected in the mirror in which nothing can be concealed.1

Does anybody really believe that his most secret thoughts and desires are not manifest in the whole of being, or that the events within the darkness of his subconscious or in the isolation of his consciousness do not produce eternal repercussions? Does anybody really believe that he can escape from the responsibility for what he has done and thought in secret?

Omniscience means that our mystery is manifest. Omnipresence means that our privacy is public. The center of our whole being is involved in the center of all being; and the center of all being rests in the center of our being.2

“Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?”

When life becomes full; full of job and family and complicated relationships, professional demands and tight schedules, bosses’ expectations, long days with no time for leisurely lunches or even pleasant conversations over coffee, not to mention praying, you just might want to remind yourself about God:

“You know when I sit down and when I rise up,You discern my thoughts from afar.”

Fairly recently, I was on a plane on my way back to Manila enjoying a totally different persepective of the clouds. The cumulous clouds that day were bright and beautiful, but unlike how I normally "look up" at them, I was looking down at the clouds! And this verse came to mind:
“If I ascend to heaven, you are there.If I take the wings of the morningand settle at the farthest limits of the sea,even there your hand shall hold me fast.”

Tonight, when you fall exhausted into bed, you might be intrigued by:

“You search out my path and my lying down.”

And if your life can only be described as hellish: if nothing is working, if it all seems tragically empty and lonely, if relationships are sour and work is boring—and there is no light on the horizon—no promise, no hope—hear these words:

“If I make my bed in Sheol,” which is another word for hell, “You are there.”

And if you find yourself thinking a lot about your own limitations, if the recent death of a loved one, a close call, a dreaded lab report, the worst diagnosis you could imagine, if you find yourself thinking about what someone called “the insult of our mortality,” hear these words which I think should be the very last words any of us is privileged to hear:3

“If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover meand the light around me become night,even the darkness is not dark to you;the night is as bright as the day,for darkness is as light to you.’”

He knows my name...He knows my every thought
He see each tear that falls and hears me when I call.

_____________________________
1 Tillich, Paul, sermon Escape from God, UTS Chapel 1955
2 Ibid
3 Buchanan, John, sermon Inescapable God, Fourth Presbyterian Chicago, January 16, 2000