For discernment committee for Thursday evening, we are asked,

“You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.” - Psalm 139
Reflect on that verse. How has and is God calling you to use your gifts for the kingdom? How do you understand the priesthood of all believers?

Additional question for nominee: Why do you feel called to exercise your gifts as an ordained leader?

Spend time sharing each others spiritual autobiographies orally or in written form.

So, I’ve been looking at Psalm 139 from a bunch of different angles. It starts off talking about how God knows us better than we can understand. Later, it talks about how there is no escaping from God. In the middle of this is the verse we are invited to think about.

I suspect many may focus on what it is like to have God’s hand laid upon us and two images come to mind. One is of God taking us by the scruff of the neck, similar to how a mother cat carries kittens. Staying with the feline image, I think of God’s hand being laid upon us, in a manner similar to how we pat a kitten, which I imagine must feel pleasurable and comforting to the kitten.

I think back to when I most vividly felt God calling me. All of those feelings were there. It was as if God were picking me up by the scruff of the neck, and setting me on the course I am intended for. In that was a very strong sense of God’s overwhelming love.

Yet the first part of the verse especially jumps out at me, to be hemmed in. The connotations are of being surrounded like a besieged city. God has surrounded us and is besieging us, to get us to say yes to God’s love.

Thinking again to those times of feeling closest to God, it seems like a good way to describe the feeling is of being wrapped up in a warm blanket of great love, almost like a spiritual swaddling blanket. Recently, I heard another person talking about feeling God’s presence that way, and I thought, “Yes, that person is describing the same feeling.”

This overwhelming love is not some special feeling given to special people at special times. Instead, it seems, it is more like the water that surrounds fish in the story of “This is water.” “This is God’s Love” It is around us all the time, but too often, in our struggles, in our distractions, in the grind of daily life, we don’t notice it. To me, this captures a key aspect of the priesthood of all believers. We are all hemmed in by this amazing love. We are all called to proclaim this love to those around us.

So why do I believe God is calling me to proclaim this love as an ordained priest? That is what I’m exploring, trying to figure out. I suspect it has something to do with metaphors and sacraments. What are the outward and visible signs of God’s overwhelming love for us? The bread and wine of the Eucharist? The water of baptism? The kind words of a blessing? A smile?

How do we understand and share signs of God’s love in post structuralist twenty first century digital culture (without going all academic and losing everyone and the love along the way)?