I both love and am a little afraid of the images in this psalm. I love the fact that I am so well known and loved by God. I am pleased that he will guide me throughout my life.
At the same time, I am not always pleased with my thoughts, and am not sure that God is pleased with them either! There is nothing we can think or do, and hide it from God. The good news is that he loves us with all our faults and failings.
God's love is unconditional. We have trouble understanding what unconditional love is like.
The closest I can come up with is seeing my children right after they are born. There is nothing that they have done to earn my love, and there is nothing they have done to challenge that love. I figure, if I can love my children with that intensity, then God can do better.
We get challenged as our children grow. The first few years are challenging physically. Lack of sleep can make us cranky and a crying baby going through teething can be difficult.
Then comes the disobedience and challenge of the teen years and we think back on the crying baby and realize that this was the easy part of parenting.
I'm sure that we are often both the crying baby and the rebellious teenager in God's eyes. We can also be like the child who comes into the house and looks into the refrigerator and complains that there's nothing to eat when we have just returned from the grocery store and restocked the fridge and the cabinets.
Gratitude can be lacking in us as well when we compare our blessing to those of others and feel cheated. It's always amazed me that God can put up with our whining!
God loves us so much, and all he asks us to do is love in return.
