| ANNE WILLIAMSON |

As a teenager, I loved Psalm 139. Because I struggled with depression, verses such as 11 and 12 - "If I say, 'Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night,' even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day..." - were deeply comforting. I felt hopeful and connected to something bigger when reading it.

That is, until I got to verse 19. You can read the whole psalm here, but to give you an idea the next few verses include, "O that you would kill the wicked, O God... Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?... I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies." Such anger and violence. Ideas that did not sit well with my image of God. I wanted to take a giant red pen through them... and so I did. For many years, anytime I read or shared Psalm 139, I simply skipped over verses 19 - 22. I did this until it stopped working for me... LEARN, LISTEN, LOVE...