chugh jIH ascend Dung Daq chal, SoH 'oH pa'. chugh jIH chenmoH wIj bed Daq the Daq vo' the Heghpu', yIlegh, SoH 'oH pa'!
If I ascend up into heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in the place of the dead, behold, you are there! Ps 139:8
If I ascend up into heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in the place of the dead, behold, you are there! Ps 139:8
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Artificial intelligence developers speak of something called the "Horizon Effect" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon_effect). When programming a game - like chess or checkers - they discovered that as a program looked ahead and evaluated its choices, there was a limit - a horizon that was beyond the computers finite capacity to anticipate.
This meant simply that the machine would make decisions that turned out to be disastrous once the game advanced beyond that "horizon."
chugh jIH ascend Dung Daq chal, SoH 'oH pa'. chugh jIH chenmoH wIj bed Daq the Daq vo' the Heghpu', yIlegh, SoH 'oH pa'!
If I ascend up into heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in the place of the dead, behold, you are there! Ps 139:8
If I ascend up into heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in the place of the dead, behold, you are there! Ps 139:8
This verse pictures the limits-beyond-the-limits of human experience. "Heaven" - shamayim in Hebrew appears nearly 400 times in the Bible, and carries the idea of something lofty - the sky, the realm of the stars. Poetically, as in English, it can convey the idea of a spiritual place. I've translated it as "chal" the Klingon word for "sky."
At the opposite extreme we have "the realm of the dead," in Hebrew "sheol" the invisible world of departed souls. What that means to the Psalmist isn't clear - but collectively - from the heavens to the grave, he is confident he cannot cross any border to escape the LORD.
God has no horizon. It's clear - there is no distance so far that we might escape God's notice.
Right now, the space probe New Horizons (http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/), the fastest human ship ever, has just passed Jupiter. This craft took 13 months to get there - an incredible speed - and it still has around 8 years to reach Pluto. It's thrilling to see the amazing pictures it has returned of the Jupiter systsem, and I'm looking forward to what it will find in the outer reaches of our solar system. This vessel, true to its name, extends our view, gives us new horizons. And yet - we know, and certainly the author of Psalm 139 would agree - even at this incomparable distance, we will not be beyond God's boundaries.
Of course, we generally are not moving at such speeds, or travelling such distances. But our lives can ascend to great joys and triumphs and just as quickly descend into deep moments of despair. The strength, the encouragement we have here is that - in those moments - WE AREN'T OUTSIDE GOD'S HORIZON. He's there, he's ready to hear. And he's ready to help.
chugh jIH ascend Dung Daq chal, SoH 'oH pa'. chugh jIH chenmoH wIj bed Daq the Daq vo' the Heghpu', yIlegh, SoH 'oH pa'!
If I ascend up into heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in the place of the dead, behold, you are there! Ps 139:8
If I ascend up into heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in the place of the dead, behold, you are there! Ps 139:8
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