This year, we are introducing another new column for you—”Faith Unpacked.” The column is written by David Dault, PhD, host and executive producer of Things Not Seen, a radio show and podcast about the intersection of culture and faith. He is also one half of the popular podcast The Francis Effect—the other half being Father Dan Horan, OFM.

In “Faith Unpacked,” David will delve into current issues, but through a uniquely faith-based lens. He will explore what these issues mean to us as people of faith.

Many argue the death penalty can help survivors move on with their lives. However, this counselor writes that true healing can happen only when we learn to “walk with the pain.”

The death penalty has been with us for millennia. If you take the time to read the Old Testament, you will find that the death penalty was widely accepted. We find in the words of Exodus the justification invoked to this day to defend the use of executions: “You shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe” (21:23‚ 25).

This is known as Mosaic law and is an integral part of our legal system. And yet Jesus came to challenge it: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on [your] right cheek, turn the other one to him as well” (Mt 5:38, 39).

What a truly radical notion! In the Old Testament, one sees that violence was a way of life, and execution was a primary tool for meting out justice. But Jesus sweeps that all away.

As with many things Jesus said, excuses have been made and qualifiers added: Love your enemy . . . except when he is a murderer. Then you are justified to kill him, a conclusion that sounds very much like Mosaic law.

Desire for Vengeance Is Real

On the other hand, even if we accept Jesus’ teaching, turning the other cheek is not that simple. I can’t simply say, “Well, Patterson, you claim to be a Christian, so you must love your enemy and oppose the death penalty.” I also understand the desire for vengeance.

Some years ago when I was an Army psychologist, I was tasked with evaluating a man arrested for beating his 3-month-old stepdaughter within an inch of her life on Christmas Eve. It had already been determined that the child suffered irreversible brain damage. As I was interviewing the man, I received a call from the pediatric ICU informing me she had also been blinded. I hung up and told this man that news. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “Oh, well.”

In that moment, I wanted to jump across my desk, grab him by the throat, and beat him within an inch of his life! As I think about him almost 40 years later, I have the same feeling. I am not proud of that, but it also helps me to be sensitive to the feelings of survivors when it comes to discussions of the death penalty. It reminds me to be sensitive to survivors’ need for justice and, possibly, vengeance.

To forgive means I also have to face all my rage and anger, all my thoughts of vengeance. We can’t sidestep the emotions.”

Many justifications for executions set aside the language of Mosaic law and focus on possible benefits for the surviving family. One doesn’t so much hear the word vengeance in such discussions, but one does hear the word closure. A common justification for the death penalty is that it provides closure for the family.

When Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was sentenced to death, the mayor of Boston expressed the hope that “this verdict provides a small amount of closure. ” Similarly, when the decision was made to allow survivors of the Oklahoma City bombing to witness the execution of Timothy McVeigh, Attorney General John Ashcroft stated that he hoped the execution would help survivors “meet their need to close this chapter in their lives.”

Whether executions provide closure depends on what we mean by that word. For most of us, closure implies a completion or conclusion. When a corporation announces store closures, that means those stores are no longer operational. So, in discussing the process of grief and trauma, closure would seem to imply a conclusion—the suggestion that there is an end point to grieving.

This expectation of closure is sometimes supported within a person’s social network. At this time, I am counseling several parents of children who committed suicide. All have commented on encountering, either directly or indirectly, the message “Aren’t you over it by now?”

Think for a moment of the people in your life you have lost. Are you no longer grieving? If I think of loved ones who are gone, I become aware that I may be grieving those losses for the rest of my days. My grief may not be as intense as it was at the time of the loss. But reminders of someone’s absence in my life help me see that grief goes on, that there is no closure in the sense of conclusion to my grief. There’s no point at which I dust myself off and say, “OK, I’m done missing that person.”

The Myth of Closure

In her book Closure: The Rush to End Grief and What It Costs Us, Professor Nancy Berns makes the compelling argument that the concept of closure has emerged within a political context to justify the death penalty and as a “made-up concept: a frame used to explain how we respond to loss.” It has become such a common word in discussions about grief that people assume it exists and is within their reach. In fact, its prevalence reflects the hope we all have that we can heal from the devastation of tragedy and trauma.

For some, closure means the conclusion to a very public process of crime, arrest, trial, and multiple appeals. Anecdotal evidence suggests that indeed the execution provides that sense of closure. But the word closure also implies healing and completion. Evidence suggests that not only does the death penalty not facilitate healing but, in fact, may interfere with it.

In his 2007 study of families of murder victims, Scott Velum found that only 2.5 percent indicated a strong sense of closure resulted from the execution of the murderer. A study published in the Marquette Law Review compared survivors’ reactions in Minnesota and Texas. Killers in Minnesota were sentenced to life imprisonment, an outcome that was experienced as satisfying by survivors. Texas survivors were less satisfied by death penalty verdicts, in large part because of the prolonged appeals process.

As Bill and Denise Richards, parents of a 9-year-old boy killed in the Boston Marathon bombings, wrote in the Boston Globe, asking that the government not seek the death penalty, “The continued pursuit of that punishment could bring years of appeals and prolong the most painful day of our lives.”

Jody Madeira worked with and studied survivors of the Oklahoma City bombings. In her book Killing McVeigh: The Death Penalty and the Myth of Closure, she noted that Timothy McVeigh’s execution did not provide the kind of closure some survivors may have hoped for. As one survivor noted, “There won’t be closure till I am dead.”

The Path to Healing

Are survivors then simply left in anguish, or is some form of healing possible? Perhaps rather than talking about closure, we should be talking about healing.

Sociologist Loren Toussaint suggests that healing is possible through the process of forgiveness. Madeira agrees that forgiveness can help but argues that it is not the only path to healing. This is a delicate topic that must be approached carefully and without judgment. Forgiveness can indeed help survivors heal, but it isn’t that simple. Forgiveness is a process, one that can last a lifetime.

First, let’s be clear on what forgiveness isn’t. Forgiveness does not mean condoning—a distinction relevant to people dealing with someone on death row. Forgiveness does not minimize what was done. The bombings in Boston will never be acceptable. The 9/11 attacks can never be dismissed in terms of the personal trauma. The murder of a loved one will never be OK. After all, the God of my understanding is indeed a God of mercy, but also a God of justice.

Then there is the common phrase forgive and forget. Not only is that often not possible, but in some cases it’s not a good idea. If someone has assaulted me, I may need to forgive that person, but it may not be a good idea for me to invite him or her over for dinner. That person may have no remorse and might assault me again.

The first step in forgiving is making the decision to forgive. The important thing to realize in making this decision is that the person who will benefit most from forgiving is the forgiver. Forgiving frees the forgiver from all the negative venom of hatred and resentment. Essentially, to forgive is to reclaim power from the forgiven. Professor Madeira quotes Oklahoma City bombing survivor Bud Welch as saying about forgiving Timothy McVeigh: “I was the one that got relief from all this pain . . . and it wasn’t about McVeigh.”

Sometimes we confuse forgiveness with reconnecting with someone in a loving way. That reconnecting is a decision that I may make after I have forgiven. I also have the option of not having the offender in my life. In other words, to forgive doesn’t necessarily mean to reconcile with someone.

To forgive means I also have to face all my rage and anger, all my thoughts of vengeance. We can’t sidestep the emotions. I have sat with some people who experienced tragedy or trauma and afterwards stated, rather flatly, “I’ve forgiven that person,” without any acknowledgment of the pain inflicted by that person. This to me is an intellectual exercise, not an experience of true forgiveness.

Learning to Walk with the Pain

In exploring alternatives to the prevalent concept of closure, we also need to broaden our understanding of grief. The concept of closure may have its roots in Elisabeth K√ºbler-Ross’ famous five stages of dying. That theory has been broadened to include grief. The fifth stage is acceptance. Like closure, this notion has many meanings.

What does it mean to accept the death of a loved one? Again, some kind of finality is suggested, a sort of conclusion to the grieving. I have sat with persons who judged themselves because they did not feel they were finished grieving. Others had well-meaning friends and relatives suggest they should be “over it by now ” or that they hadn’t “accepted” the death because they were still grieving.

Over the years I have dealt with many people who came to see me because someone else was concerned about them or, more often, because they themselves questioned whether they were grieving correctly.

I recall one beautiful woman who came to see me after the death of her husband of 50-plus years. She was concerned whether she was grieving correctly. She stated that well-meaning friends had given her a stack of books on grieving. Not wanting to disappoint anyone, she read them all. When I asked what she thought after all that reading, she told me: “I’m completely confused. They contradict one another.”

Forgiveness does not mean condoning. Forgiveness does not minimize what was done.

So what did I do? I gave her a book to read! Only it wasn’t an edition of Grieving for Dummies. It was C.S. Lewis’ A Grief Observed, his journal written the first year after the death of his beloved wife, Joy. The book has no easy answers, and, at its conclusion, it is clear that Lewis will continue to grieve. There is no nice, clean ending. No closure. Only Lewis trying to learn to walk with the pain.

In dealing with losses in my own life, what works for me is to view grieving as a process of learning to walk with the pain. This suggests that, because of a particular loss, my life is changed forever. I am challenged to find a way to move forward living my life as well as possible while at the same time carrying the loss. This is especially true for those who’ve lost a loved one through some criminal act, be it murder or terrorism.

To learn to walk with the pain has several facets. One is to make the decision not to let the trauma define the loved one’s life. It is to affirm that I will not be known as the parent of that girl or boy who was murdered. Rather, I will be known as the parent of a child who touched lives in a beautiful way before leaving life much too soon.

Another facet of walking with the pain is to facilitate the loved one’s legacy. Such legacies may take the form of charitable donations or even the establishment of a charity. Others might establish a scholarship fund. Some get tattoos or plant trees. Such actions don’t make pain go away, but they create a legacy that has some meaning.

For me, acceptance means acknowledging that life is now different, and that I will be walking with this pain until I meet my loved one again in a better place. That may be the only real closure.

With the heart of a warrior and the soul of a peacemaker, this activist boldly pushes for complete nuclear disarmament in the United States.

She’s been emblazoned on the front page of the New York Times, invited to a congressional hearing, and is now the subject of a feature-length documentary. Yet Sister Megan Rice, a member of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus, never set out for recognition or glory. For her, all the attention is a somewhat unwelcome consequence of her daring attempt to prod the United States into complete nuclear disarmament.

“We feel that by doing direct actions that are a little dramatic, don’t do any damage, they’re nonviolent, we wake the public up. That’s the point,” she explains, speaking on the phone from the Holy Child Jesus community in Washington, DC, where she now resides.

Sister Megan, a petite octogenarian with a winning smile and quiet concern for everyone but herself, felt that something dramatic was needed to turn this nation’s mind toward disarmament. She had already spent decades—and been arrested over 40 times—protesting nuclear weapons in small acts of civil disobedience. But the plan that she and two fellow activists executed on July 28, 2012, not only proved her boldness, but also sent shock waves across the country.

Breaking In to the ‘Fort Knox of Uranium’

Catholic teaching has condemned the use of nuclear weapons since the inception of the A-bomb. In a 2017 statement, Pope Francis took a step further and declared that even the possession of these weapons was immoral. According to the Federation of American Scientists, as of June 2018, the United States still has approximately 6,450 nuclear weapons—a quantity second only to Russia’s 6,850 weapons but far overshadowing the country with the third-largest supply, France, which has 300.

Convinced that inaction was inadmissible, Sister Megan and two others set off around 2:30 a.m., their path lit only by flashlights that they had taped to emit just a sliver of light. They soon entered the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, breaching the chain-link fence with bolt cutters. This sprawling site fabricates and stores the nation’s stockpile of weapons-grade uranium, some of which was used in the atomic bomb that devastated Hiroshima over seven decades ago.

Sister Megan was 82 at the time. The quarter-mile hike through the thick forest and up the steep ridge that borders the northern grounds of the complex left her leaning on the arm of fellow activist Greg Boertje-Obed for support. The third member of the party, Vietnam veteran Michael Walli, walked ahead and attempted to beat a pathway through the brush.

“It was a long hike for her, [and] we had to stop frequently for her to catch her breath,” recalls Walli, noting that Sister Megan pushed on despite a mild heart condition.

After more than an hour, they reached the protected area. Self-styled as the “Fort Knox of Uranium,” the building that stores the radioactive material looks like a huge, bleached fortress. The windowless, white concrete walls are crowned with armed guard towers and surrounded by three chain-link fences that are laced with motion sensors, video cameras, and other detection technology. Signs declare that lethal force is authorized, meaning that trespassers can be shot dead on sight, no questions asked.

“She is very faith-filled and hopeful, more than me even,” says Boertje-Obed. “She, from the very beginning, would say, ‘We can do this. We can do this. We can overcome these obstacles.'”

Sister Megan walked right in after the men cut through the fences with bolt cutters. Walli and Boertje-Obed followed. No audible alarms went off and no guards acknowledged the intrusion for more than half an hour. A series of security failures would later be uncovered during a scathing investigation by members of the Department of Energy’s Office of Inspector General.

Emboldened, the activists spread symbolism around the base of the fortress, including a Bible, white roses, and donated blood. Sister Megan draped crime scene tape near the wall to highlight her conviction that nuclear weapons are crimes against humanity. Walli spray-painted messages on the white surface, such as “The fruit of justice is peace” and “Woe to an empire of blood.” Boertje-Obed used a small sledgehammer to dislodge a chunk of the concrete wall and “begin” the destruction of all weapons-manufacturing facilities. Eventually they were discovered and arrested, but not before the three approached an armed security guard to read a statement “indicting” the US government for its nuclear modernization program.

The Fallout

News of the security breach, aggravated by the fact that it was led by an 82-year-old nun, spread like wildfire. The story was on the front page of the New York Times and was broadcast by both serious and satirical news outlets across the country. Awaiting trial, Sister Megan was an invited guest at a congressional hearing that grilled Y-12 overseers for security failures. Congressman Joe Barton of Texas thanked Sister Megan for “bringing out the inadequacies of our security system.”

For her bold action, however, Sister Megan ultimately ended up with a prison sentence. She, Walli, and Boertje-Obed were convicted of depredation of property and sabotage, translated as “intending to harm national security.” She was sentenced to spend nearly three years in federal prison, while the men were each given over five years. Pro bono lawyers eventually appealed the sabotage ruling and had all three set free, but not before each served over two years.

Yet, just as she never intended to be thrust into the limelight, Sister Megan also did not risk her life to highlight the security system—or lack thereof. Her lifelong campaign has always aimed to emphasize that these weapons should not exist at all. “It’s illegal to deal in weapons of mass destruction—immoral and illegal,” she frequently emphasizes with a characteristic vehemence. Her judgment of “illegal” refers to the 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons that binds countries with nuclear weapons, including the United States, to move toward disarmament.

A Born Activist

From an early age, Sister Megan seemed almost destined to become an antinuclear expert and ad hoc spokeswoman. She was only 3 years old when her parents hosted peace activist Dorothy Day in their New York City home, a memory Sister Megan still vividly recalls. She also remembers feeling shocked at the age of 9 when she was told that the man next door was working on something so secret that he could not even tell his wife. It would be years before she learned that this man was a Columbia University biophysicist involved in the Manhattan Project.

When Sister Megan was 15, the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Her mother’s brother, Walter Hooke, had been deployed as a Marine in the Pacific. After the second bomb fell, Hooke was sent to Nagasaki where he would witness firsthand the devastation that was caused by the blast. He was also tasked with driving the archbishop of Nagasaki, Paul Aijir≈ç Yamaguchi, recently returned from mandatory government service, to the site where his decimated cathedral once stood.

“The mother of the archbishop and his sister had been at Mass on the ninth of August, when the bomb hit Nagasaki, and [they] were incinerated in the cathedral,” Sister Megan relates. “[My uncle] was furious about the bomb. He was totally ‘conscientized’ by what he saw. How could his country ever do something like this?”

Sister Megan entered the Society of the Holy Child Jesus in 1947 and took her final vows in 1955. Shortly afterward, she pursued a master’s degree in biology, trained at Harvard, and became the first person at Boston College to use a radioactive tracer as she studied cancer. The next four decades of her life led to her conviction that not only was the use of nuclear weapons immoral, but their very existence was a scourge to humanity.

Her order sent the then-32-year-old to West Africa and tasked her with teaching impoverished communities in Nigeria and Ghana. After sleeping in classrooms without running water or electricity, Sister Megan began to become convinced that the money this country spends on defense should be invested elsewhere.

“How could the United States be spending all this money on an airplane to kill people when [the African people] would see [that] an airplane should be used to enrich people, [for] relaxation and entertainment?” she wonders aloud.

Taking on a Multi-Billion Dollar Industry

The United States spent $509 billion, or 3.1 percent of the gross national product, on defense in the 2017 fiscal year, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). This roughly compares to the 3.1 percent spent on Medicare, or the 3.2 percent spent on the combined “programs related to transportation, education, veterans’ benefits, health, housing assistance, and other activities,” as the CBO phrases the grouping. To look at the numbers another way, about half of lawmakers’ “discretionary spending” goes to national defense.

“I consider it one of the root causes of, say, poverty in the United States, and therefore of crime,” Sister Megan says of the nuclear weapons program, which requires constant upkeep and modernization. “It’s a root cause of many other issues because so much money is going into them and much, much of that money goes into the people’s pockets.”

She eventually found out for herself that the multibillion-dollar security contract could not keep an octogenarian nun out of Y-12. Her action was arguably the most disruptive, but over 100 more or less dramatic protests have breached security at nuclear-related sites across the country. Collectively known as “Plowshares ” actions, the name comes from a prophecy in the Book of Isaiah that predicts a peaceful world in the future where nations “shall beat their swords into plowshares” (2:4).

The first Plowshares action was staged in 1980 by brothers Phil and Dan Berrigan, both priests and well-known peace activists at the time. The two men and six others snuck onto a naval base in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, spread blood on documents, and symbolically “disarmed” nuclear weapons with a small hammer.

Sister Megan would come to know the Berrigan brothers personally. She would also be present when five Plowshares activists, among whom was 83-year-old Sacred Heart Sister Anne Montgomery, were sentenced to prison for similarly breaking in to the Naval Base Kitsap’s Bangor complex in Tacoma, Washington.

Reaching a Broader Audience

“What I found with these people is their true motivation is so pure, and their only agenda, for want of a better word, is their compassion for humanity,” says Helen Young, a documentarian and Emmy-winning producer. Young was already following the story of Sister Anne and the four other Bangor protesters when Sister Megan staged her action. For Young, Sister Megan was a natural focal point of the documentary that she eventually would name The Priests, the Nuns, and the Bombs, unwilling as Sister Megan was to be in the limelight.

“Attention will focus on what is the most startling part of [the story] and that was it,” says Young, describing Sister Megan’s bold action at the age of 82. “And I explained that to her, and she said to me, ‘OK, dearie, if I need to be your visual aid, I will be,'” Young recalls with a laugh.

Sister Megan has now been the “visual aid” at over 20 screenings of the documentary, greeting audiences at locations such as the United Nations, George Washington University, the University of Notre Dame, and the Center for Study of Responsive Law and Essential Information in Washington, DC. Some high schools have requested that Sister Megan make a digital appearance as a Skype guest.

“I have tremendous respect for all of these individuals,” says Young of the activists in her documentary. “Whether you believe or agree or disagree with their political or particular philosophy on this issue, you cannot argue with their dedication and commitment.”

Sister Megan’s life continues to be dedicated to what she calls “nuclear resistance.” When she’s not touring with the documentary or at prayer with her community, she is answering e-mails or reading articles related to disarmament. Every Friday, she stands outside the White House with posters protesting the nuclear program.

She still keeps up with the imprisoned, especially other activists who are serving sentences for antiwar protests. “It’s very easy to fill up a postcard,” she says with a laugh.

When Sister Megan spoke at a documentary screening at the University of Notre Dame, she carried the same backpack that had been on her back during the nation’s largest nuclear security breach. But, in true form, Sister Megan was not flaunting it as an artifact. She simply needed something to carry her belongings.

Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton was a true daughter of the American Revolution. She was born August 28, 1774, just two years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence. By birth and marriage, she was linked to the first families of New York and enjoyed the fruits of high society. Reared as a staunch Episcopalian by her mother, she learned the value of prayer and Scriptures and nightly examination of conscience. Her father did not have much use for churches but was a great humanitarian, teaching his daughter to love and serve others.

The early death of her mother and her baby sister in 1778 gave Elizabeth a feel for eternity and the temporariness of the pilgrim life on earth. Far from being broody and sullen, she faced each new “holocaust,” as she put it, with hopeful cheerfulness.

At 19, Elizabeth was the belle of New York and married a handsome, wealthy businessman, William Magee Seton. They had five children before his business failed and he died of tuberculosis. At 30, Elizabeth was widowed and penniless, with five small children to support.

Faith As a Driving Force

While in Italy with her dying husband, Elizabeth witnessed Catholicity in action through family friends. Three basic points led her to become a Catholic: belief in the Real Presence, devotion to the Blessed Mother, and conviction that the Catholic Church led back to the apostles and to Christ. Many of her family and friends rejected her when she became a Catholic in 1805.

To support her children, she opened a school in Baltimore. From the beginning, her group followed the lifestyle of a religious community, which was officially founded in 1809.

The vast letters of Elizabeth Seton reveal the development of her spiritual life from ordinary goodness to heroic sanctity. She suffered great trials of sickness, misunderstanding, the death of loved ones (her husband and two young daughters), and the heartache caused by a wayward son. Elizabeth is buried in Emmitsburg, Maryland.

Final Thoughts

Elizabeth Seton had no special gifts. She was not a mystic or stigmatic. She did not prophesy or speak in tongues. She had two great devotions: abandonment to the will of God and an ardent love for the Blessed Sacrament.

She wrote to a friend, Julia Scott, that she would prefer to exchange the world for “a cave in the desert. But God will give me a great deal to do, and I hope always to prefer his will to every wish of my own.” St. Elizabeth’s brand of sanctity is open to everyone—if we love God and do his will.

Elizabeth Seton told her sisters: “The first goal I propose in our daily work is to do the will of God and secondly to do it in the manner he wills it.”

May we have the courage to follow her lead.

If you’ve ever been to some big family celebration—let’s say a wedding—you know that everyone was hyped, and that added to the excitement. “A good time was had by all,” as the saying goes. But we can’t stay on an emotional high forever.

Emotionally, we couldn’t handle it, and our hearts would probably have fits, as well. There is a good and holy place in our lives for hype, but there is also a good and holy place for coming down from the heights and for being more reflective.

That’s the role of Ordinary Time. It’s the time to let go of the celebration and its attendant hype and to live our Christian life in a more reflective and “ordinary” way. But here’s the kicker: we can’t ignore the fact that we have celebrated the entrance of our God into our human life.

What a magnificent wonder beyond our imagining! Now is the time to let that truth sink in and permeate our lives. And to do that we need a quieter and more reflective period—namely, Ordinary Time.

But there is also a future aspect to the season. We are catching our breath and preparing our hearts for the next great celebration, Easter. Sure, we will have a more concentrated preparation in Lent, but even now we live our lives and hear the Scripture readings at Mass, considering both the wonder of Christmas and the upcoming celebration of the death and resurrection of that God made flesh.

After the wedding guests have left and the bride and groom are off on a honeymoon, it’s time to reflect on the big day and to relish its meaning and to feel its effects. But it’s also time to return to work, to our ordinary lives. But it’s different because we are different. We have just celebrated young love and new family life. Our ordinary life is changed. And it will also be changed in the future because of what has happened. What we celebrated has made a difference.

So, too, in our liturgical life in the Church. Every Advent-Christmas and Lent-Easter influences our ordinary lives, and Ordinary Time is our chance to reflect and relish what our God has done and will do in our “ordinary” lives.

Pray

Dear God,
My heart is heavy
at the passing of time,
but I take refuge
in the certainty
that you await me
at my journey’s end.
Give me the peace of mind
to recognize and appreciate
the passage of time—
never wasting it.
Every moment, I know,
is a gift from you.
Amen.

“You formed my inmost being;
you knit me in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, so wonderfully you made me;
wonderful are your works!”
(Psalm 139:13-14)

When I was pregnant with my children, I used to spend endless hours wondering whether they would look more like me or my husband or what characteristics of ours I wished they did—or didn’t—inherit. And then after they were born, I would look at them in amazement at the thought that my husband and I created them and I nourished and helped them grow within my own body.

I’ve often wondered if God gets a similar feeling when looking at me. Perhaps that curiosity is what draws me to this psalm. The words in it trigger so many experiences, emotions and questions within me. In fact, when I was younger, I learned a popular slogan that perfectly sums up this psalm: “God doesn’t make junk.”

The Whole Kit and Caboodle

While it would be a whole lot easier to simply focus on the two verses of this psalm that I’ve chosen, I can’t ignore the entirety of the passage. And that means that while I do praise God for how “wonderfully” I have been made, both God and I are well aware of my shortcomings.

Each time I read this psalm, I can hear God’s voice—much like I’ve often heard my own father or mother—saying, “I’ve got an eye on you.” It’s both a comforting feeling and a reminder to be vigilant about my actions and the choices I make. It also reminds me that my potential is endless and that someone’s always got my back. God has given me everything I need to be a loving, caring person. But then it’s up to me to use it.

I became even more aware of that when I became a mom. I remember writing in my daughter’s baby book that what I hope for her as she grows up is that she be kind and loving to others, and to remember that she is capable of doing whatever she puts her mind to.

This psalm reminds me that she’s already well on her way to achieving that, thanks to God. Through my husband and me, God has provided her with all she needs. Those things with which she struggles, such as the impatience she seems to have inherited from her mother, God is ready to help her overcome. All she has to do is ask. Perhaps her mom will learn along with her.

One-on-One with God

One of the other things that attracts me to this psalm is how personal it is. Because of that, it’s a perfect fit for me, because my relationship with God has always been a very personal one. It’s a relationship where one minute I can be angry with God for something bad that has happened and then the next minute I can’t thank God enough for the many blessings in my life. It helps to remind me that, no matter what, God will always be there for me.

In fact, many of the psalms are like that. That one-on-one I have with God connects with the personal nature of this psalm. I’m not one for speaking out in the name of all people as some of the psalms do, but I do know what’s in my heart. As Psalm 139 reminds me, so does God—better than anyone else.

Understanding Psalm 139

Psalm 139 has elements of both hymn and lament. It begins with praise for God’s presence and continual care (verses 1-18), but then addresses the writer’s difficulty in dealing with evildoers, those whose external behavior gives evidence that they “hate God” (verses 19-22). The psalmist seeks to avoid their “faithless oaths” but instead to promote values that reflect God’s covenant with the Hebrew people.

Throughout this very personal psalm, the writer (“I”) is speaking directly to God (“you”). The psalmist sees personal union with God as tightly joined to social action on behalf of others.

Next Month: Psalm 73