Where Can I Go?

By Marilyn Travis

Psalm 139:7 “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?”

Today I am pulling an entry from one of my old journals. On Wednesday, April 19, 2017 my life was in a bit of turmoil. I was caring for my mother, who died six months later, we were a bit strapped financially, and headlines about North Korea were a daily occurrence. Here is my entry from that day:

Yesterday I had a wonderful experience. I was walking my usual route with Elwood (my chihuahua), down the highway to Casey Jones Park, then across the road to the houses in the pines. I was feeling kind of down – worried about Mom, North Korea, finances - so I prayed that Jesus would be more real – more tangible in my life, because I always struggle with doubts. As I walked, I chanted to myself “Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ above me, Christ below me, Christ within me, Christ around me.”

As I approached Cal’s Auto, the end of his fence anyway, his horse was standing out there as usual. I walk by this horse every day and she has never acknowledged my existence. This day she was walking away from me. As I came closer the horse turned around and met me at the end of the fenced pasture. She kept walking with me, head over the fence turned toward me, making eye contact the entire length of the pasture. Right before the end, I heard, in my own voice in my head, “I will never leave you. I am with you always.” Praise the Lord! Today as I walked by that pasture, the horse ignored me as usual.

That experience has stayed with me. I no longer struggle so with doubt. It brings me comfort.

Psalm 139:1-12, 23-24 express my experience perfectly:

O Lord, you have searched me, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord. You hem me in, behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me, even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you…Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.

I’d like to close with a prayer from Day by Day, by Peter Scazzero:

Father, it is easy for me to let my feelings or my circumstances be the indicator of whether you are present or absent in my life. Help me to see that even though I may not feel you in the ways I would like, you are still working powerfully in my life. In Jesus’ name, amen.