Known – Psalm 139

This is many people’s favourite psalm—
and of course it is:
psalms are basically songs,
and songs are what we do
when the facts aren’t enough.

As a musician I’m more melody than lyric,
because lyrics are hard.
So I listen to Psalm 139 like a song,
it was born out of anxiety.
David was fleeing for his life—
and yet he starts with lilies:
a bright motif in a dark key.

God knows me.
Not as a topic.
As a child is known.
As a spouse is known.
You have searched me and you know me—
and everything else springs out of that.

No need to pretend.
Not at home.
Not at work.
Not while something in you rages.

He knows my sitting down—
breakfast, the ordinary minutes.
He knows my rising up—
the big moments.
He sees the path and the bed,
the hallway between them.

CCTV captures everything—
but God’s seeing isn’t surveillance.
It’s shelter.

He knows what I’m thinking
before the sentence finds my mouth.
He can complete my words.
That level of knowing can feel exposing.
And yet it’s comfort too:
God doesn’t step back.
He steps closer—
for safety, for protection—
like the blanket I pull right up
so the whole body feels covered.

Where can I go from your Spirit?
If I climb into heaven—
you are there.
If I drop into the depths—
you are there.
If I run east into light
or west into the last edge of the map—
you are there.

Even the dark I rely on
to hide what I resist
is not dark to you.

I’ve been watching craftsmen
take pride in the hidden joints,
the bracing no one sees,
the careful work
inside the instrument.
And I hear it in this psalm:
no corners cut in a human life,
no detail shrugged off,
not even the unphotographed parts.

You formed me
for yourself.
You wrote down my days
when my own journal
went silent for months.

Still I keep wanting
a clean time signature,
a neat ending,
a song that never jars.

But this one does.
It breaks into anger,
into justice-talk,
into rawness that won’t behave.
As if to say:
don’t pretend with God.
Don’t edit your need.

And then it returns
to where it began—
to the opening chords,
to lilies in a dark key:
Search me.
Know my heart.
Unravel the story I tell myself
and show me the story I’m in—
the one that keeps telling me
I am known,
I am held,
and I can be led
in the way everlasting.

Original message by Joel Mailei, The Bridge Church Macquarie Park NSW
11 January 2026