My Motives

O LORD, you examine me and know me.

You know when I sit down and when I get up;

even from far away you understand my motives.

Psalm 139:2

 

I am memorizing Psalm 139 in earnest this new year. I’ve lived between its lines since girlhood, and especially young womanhood, as I struggled to accept the embodiment of my soul in a vessel I did not love. Some portions of Psalm 139 became well-worn. Others were just filler words between the ones I needed most. In this season of life, I find myself pulling out these familiar truths like a string of family pearls, wanting to hand them down to my daughter, who is growing up in a world where it’s hard to tell what real beauty is.

Truth is needed today, the same truth that got me and centuries of others through the struggle to be known and loved. Part of the truth in Psalm 139 is about why we do what we do.

You know when I sit down and when I get up; even from far away you understand my motives.

I guess I’ve sat down and stood up over twenty-five times just this afternoon. It has been a day of study, meditation, prayer, and writing. I pace when I pray, especially when I’m praying through my fears. I stand up and go to the window for inspiration when I write. I sit back down and pound the keys, then stand up again in search of a tea bag as I flip the kettle on. All the while, thoughts fly, words sweep over my mind, and His eyes are on me and they know me. The Lord probes beyond the standing, the sitting, the rising, the falling, and understands why I do it all. He sees my motives.

Interestingly, the Hebrew word rêa‘ for “motive” means a thought (as an association of ideas). That sounds like a trail to me, a path of ideas that turn into one cohesive thought that could very easily become a belief. Like the mouse in the popular children’s book, one thought leads to another, and another, and before I know it, I believe something and act on it. There I go, sitting down and getting up again.

In all this commotion, He knows you and me, and He loves us. I wonder if being known might slow us down a bit today, help us sit a bit longer. There’s nothing that can motivate me to jump up that surprises Him. There’s not a single bit of news that causes me to sink into my chair in sorrow that He does not understand.

I am not alone in my sitting and standing, and neither are you.

The Lord knows why we do what we do, every day, and He loves us. #known Share on X

That is motive enough to make me jump up and shout for joy.

Lord, motivate me with Your love today. Amen.

@audreycfrank