Today we have a full moon. Last night the skies were spectacularly clear and the moon was so bright that I could walk in the woods without artificial light. I let the dog out a couple of times last night when I’d take a break from reading, and even the leaves from the white oaks were visible on the earth due to the moon’s illumination, and the massive limbs were like something from a tale by Edgar Allan Poe. It was simply beautiful.

This morning at PT after I left the gym, I looked over my right shoulder to see the sky beginning to display its predawn striations of color, too. I could hear the traffic building, too, as commuters were driving in for the daily regimen.

It was perfect weather to be outside for a few miles. The sun rose a blazing orange over the hills. Mourning doves raced silently across the sky and away from noises and over the grassy hills where I jogged.

I got to work and cleared out my emails and jotted down my to-do list related to my upcoming trip to Ft. Stewart with my unit.

I opened to Psalm 139:7, too, and read: “Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence?” Short answer: Nowhere. One cannot escape God’s presence. It’s God world, after all, and we’re His creatures. The question David asks is rhetorical. It answers itself.

In the following verses, he elaborates:

If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me. (Ps 139:8-10)

Even when Jonah “rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD” (Jonah 1:3), Jonah was soon to learn that God’s plans trumped Jonah’s plans. There was no escaping God for Jonah. God used even that disobedient prophet.

In my mind’s eye, images from the moonlit forest floor from last night, the silent white dish of the moon above the oaks, the sounds of the mourning doves cooing this a.m. on the running trail, the oak near the office, et al, they all bathed my imagination and David’s question in Psalm 139 came into focus again. It spoke with clarity.

David’s son wrote, “For a man’s ways are before the eyes of the LORD” (Pr 5:21a). And David wrote, “Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence?” The same principle sang as clearly as this morning’s sounds and as clearly as the night’s moonlit woods and as clearly as the doves that slid in silent gray washes above the hills on the running trail.