As a boy I remember searchlights sweeping across the sky, searching for enemy planes. If one was spotted they would lock on to it and the gunners would try to shoot it down. We were reminded of this in Psalm 139, “Oh LORD you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up … you search out my path” (Psalm 139:1-3). David realizes that God’s power to see extends far beyond the physical. “You discern my thoughts from afar … even before a word is on my tongue …” (Psalm 139:4).

In the language young people today, it is ‘awesome’ that God knows our thoughts before we even put them into words. That really is a searchlight on the mind, and we cannot limit this just to David.

There is even more in this Psalm. “For you formed my inward parts, you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made … your eyes saw my unformed substance” (Psalm 139:13,14,16). Today, clever men have unravelled some of the secrets of DNA and the human genome. David was inspired 3,000 years ago to write of his “unformed substance”, i.e DNA.

The word ‘search’ occurs again at the climax of the Psalm. “Search me O God, and know my heart, try me and know my thoughts … and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23,24). Would I, would you, want God’s searchlight on your thoughts? If the answer is ‘No’ then should it not also be ‘No’ to the question as to whether we want to led by God in the way everlasting?