Profiled by God--You can't run, you can't hide

Law enforcement has learned to use a tool called offender profiling, or criminal profiling.  In the modern era, it has been around since the 1940s, but has come into wider use in the later half of the twentieth century.  There are crime dramas on television and movies that highlight this method, (Criminal Minds, The Silence of the Lambs).  After 9/11, there was an outcry against racial profiling. But generally, profilers look to accomplish three main goals: provide a social and psychological assessment for law enforcement to seek out and find the offender; provide a psychological evaluation of the belongings found in the possession of the offender to help get to the means, motive and opportunity of the offender; and to give suggestions and strategies to use in interviewing the offender, so that he or she will confess to the crime.

In the book of Psalms, we find that the idea of offender profiling is not new.

O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.  You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.  You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.  Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord.  You hem me in--behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. --Psalm 139:1-6

God knows me better than I know myself.  And why shouldn't he? He himself made me (see verses 13-16). Who better to understand my every thought?  He can see our habits (when I sit and when I rise), and predict how we will act in any given situation.  He knows what situation will make us leave our comfort zone and take a stand; he also knows which situations will make us want to curl up in a ball and stay in bed.  Knowing us so very well, he can predict what we will say even before we say it.

God has done his homework on us.  For most of us, to really know another person requires either extensive research, or extended periods of time in close proximity with them.  I can know a lot about Abraham Lincoln by studying history books, reading his letters to other people, and even by reading things said by Lincoln's contemporaries.  Surely God knows us in this way.  By contrast, I know my children because since the day they were born I have lived with them; I have watched them; I have rejoiced in their triumphs and wept in their defeats. How much more does God know us? He has not only watched us grow since before we were born, but he knows our thoughts, even the ones we don't share with anyone.

In 1969 Bobby Vinton recorded a song that said, "To know, know, know you is to love, love, love you." Although this is a romantic thought, it couldn't be further from the truth.  Most parents can remember times when they wanted to send their children back where they came from.  Most married people know that knowing someone intimately and still loving them involves overlooking a lot of things that you don't like about that person, and to only think about the things you do like about them.  God knows us completely, yet he loves us unconditionally.  He covers our sin with the Blood of Christ, so that He can welcome us into His home forever.

I love the story of the Prodigal Son.  The younger of two brothers chafes against his family situation.  He wants to leave, to go his own way, but he doesn't have the means to do it.  He can't wait for his father to die, so that he can inherit his portion of the estate.  And since he is the younger brother, his portion is smaller. But no matter: he just tells his father to give him what's coming to him and let him go.  The patient father gives him what he asks for (and not what he deserves--think about it!)  The son runs away from home--away from his family, away from his family's values, away from his family's religion.  But when things don't go as planned, and he hits rock bottom, the son comes back to the father.  Expecting the worst, he plans to beg for a peripheral relationship with the family.  It is as if he expects to hear the father say, "You are dead to me." But when he stops running from his father, the father embraces him.

Many of us have chosen to run away from God.  We want to go our own way.  We want to make it on our own.  But the further we run, the more we are looking over our shoulder, and the nearer God seems.  And when we fail miserably at whatever we were trying to do without him, we see God waiting for us.  He was there all the time, before and behind.  He had us surrounded, but when he places his hand on us, it is not to harm us; it is to hold us.  Maybe you read verse five and thought of it negatively.  In the old Western movies, when the cowboy hero says, "Look, we're surrounded," it is not a good thing.  In the military, if a squad gets cut off from their platoon and is surrounded by enemy soldiers, it is definitely not a good thing.  But when God surrounds us, it is to hold us in his love.

Jeremiah 29:11 says, "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future."  So when we come to the end of our rope, when we stop running and call out to God, he is there.  He reaches out, not in wrath to tear us apart, but in love to heal us and give us hope.  This is totally counter-intuitive.  No wonder the psalm writer said this blew his mind: it was too much to wrap his mind around.

Why do we run away from God, who made us, who loves us, who offers forgiveness and hope and healing? Why does God accept us, sinful as we are, and still love us even after we have cursed his name?  In the end you can't run, you can't hide--God will prevail, either in this life or the next.  You can count on it.