I come to the end—I am still with you. Psalm 139:18
Psalm 139 is a lovely meditation on God’s creation of his children and his care for them. In the middle of the psalm is a section dedicated to the formation of a life (verse 13-18). At the end of this section the psalmist marvels at the weight and the number of God’s thoughts. He closes by saying, “I come to the end, and I am still with you.”
The psalmist recognizes that God determines the beginning of a life. He also orchestrates the end of it. Life and death. Beginning and ending. Creation and elimination. God knows when an ending will come before the beginning even starts. This may sound unsettling, but to the psalmist, it is comforting. He welcomes endings because of the one fact that through it all, he is still with God.
He knows that nothing can separate him from God’s love. Romans 8:35 says that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ, not trouble, or hardship, or persecution, or famine or nakedness, or danger or sword. All of these conditions have the power to put an end to something, but even if they succeeded, God would still be there.
This is due to his great faithfulness. Psalm 91 calls his faithfulness a shield (verse 4). Nothing can penetrate it, and attacks can’t destroy it. God is present, and he has made the commitment to stay present to those whom he has chosen (Romans 8:33), to those who abide in him (Psalm 91:1), and to those who love him (Psalm 91:14).
Endings are not traumatic to God. He sees them as times to enlarge our souls, to create new things, and to bring us to an awakening. Most translations use the word “awake” in this verse. In the NIV, for example, verse 18 reads, “when I am awake, I am still with you.” Awakening implies that a person has been asleep. In the psalmist’s interpretation of beginnings and endings, he interprets awakening as the entrance into eternity. God formed him on earth, determined his last day, and woke him into forever.
We can find great comfort in this interpretation too. Everyone faces endings. A loved one’s life will someday end. The career will someday end. A cherished relationship will someday end. But we won’t lose. We will only gain.
Romans 14:8 says, “If we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.”
We come to the end, and we are still with God. If Romans 14 and Psalm 91 and Psalm 139 are true, then the only option left to us when we arrive at an ending is new life. God creates where nothing yet exists. He resurrects when all we see is loss. He gives new life when the old way of doing things has worn out.
Look at your own life. Pay attention to those places where you’ve come to an end. God just might be gathering energy and provisions to bless you with a rich, new life.
