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Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
If I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
If I settle on the far side of the sea,
Even there your hand will guide me,
Your right hand will hold me fast
If I say, \u201cSurely the darkness will hide me
And the light become night around me,\u201d
Even the darkness will not be dark to you;
The night will shine like the day,
For darkness is as light to you.\xa0
(Psalm 139:7-12)

Where can I go?\xa0

Well, that\u2019s a good question these days.\xa0 The answer is: not very far.\xa0 With borders still pretty shut and vacation options outside the province or country still pretty limited, no one is going very far.\xa0

For some, that\u2019s just a shrug of the shoulders, problem of privilege sort of thing.\xa0 But for others over these past months, it has been a much deeper and more difficult reality.\xa0

Over these past months when the \u201cwhere can I go?\u201d question had an even more strict answer, some were forced to miss the birth of a grandchild.\xa0 Some were unable to travel to a funeral, or to a loved one who was dying.\xa0 Some were unable even to visit with their hospitalized spouse.\xa0 We have been wounded by the restrictions of movement we experienced in these past months.

Of course there are some who have faced these things before: many who first immigrated here to Canada did, as when a boat ride to North America meant no return ticket.\xa0 Many new immigrants to Canada still do experience that reality.\xa0 The reality of being unable to be present for the most significant moments of life and of death in their families and among their friends.\xa0 Mostly that reason was because of the cost. \xa0Now that reason is also because the means of transportation and the openness of borders are simply not as readily available.\xa0 What can you do?\xa0 Where can you go?\xa0

And again, some of that hits closer to home.\xa0 Some of us have children who have immigrated to foreign countries.\xa0 We lived up until a few months ago as global citizens, freely able to move about the world as if borders didn\u2019t exist anymore.\xa0 But now the map has frozen.\xa0 Children are cut off from parents, siblings are cut off from one another, grandparents are cut off from grand children.\xa0

Sure we can video call, and that\u2019s great.\xa0 But it\u2019s just not quite the same thing as sitting down for dinner together, or leaning in for a tight embrace.\xa0 Our lives diverge.\xa0 \xa0\xa0

And even on the more everyday, local level\u2014we simply aren\u2019t going as many places or seeing as many people.\xa0 Friendships have been harder to keep up.\xa0 Family relationships too.\xa0 It\u2019s not just borders that have been closed, but a lot of the doors to common meeting places and homes have been too.\xa0

All that to say, this remains a profoundly lonely and isolating time for many of us.\xa0 And many of us carry the wounds of some of the harsher separations of the past months too.\xa0 For some of us, that sense of separation even extends into the future.\xa0

It is for just those of us who have had the question of \u201cwhere can I go\u201d answered with a door slammed shut by this pandemic that the words of Psalm 139 speak anew.\xa0

It is spoken to the individual\u2014to me: I am addressed.\xa0 But it is spoken as a Psalm of the community\u2014every one of us can truly speak these words as our first person prayer.\xa0

Our parents who remain settled on the far side of the sea.\xa0 Our children who have risen on the jet\u2019s wings to the heavens, flying off into the dawn.\xa0 Even the separations we ourselves have faced and continue to face that may feel like the shroud of darkness creeping down around us, isolating us further and further from the world.\xa0 Even for us: Psalm 139\u2019s words are ours.\xa0

No matter where we or our loved ones go, even if we can go nowhere at all but deeper into the darkness\u2014even there God\u2019s hand will guide us.\xa0 Because no matter where we are\u2014He is there.\xa0 No matter where our loved ones are\u2014He is there.\xa0 Even the darkness is not dark to Him; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to our God.

So, where can I go?\xa0 Nowhere that God is not already present, nowhere that God cannot find me, meet me, scoop me up and save me.\xa0 No matter what: in body and soul, in life and in death, we belong to Him.\xa0 \xa0\xa0

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