Snow on pavement. Voices tight with adrenaline. A vehicle angled wrong. Officers close enough to touch the hood. The scene moved fast, the way fear moves fast. A surge and a shout and a flash. Gunfire sounded thin through a phone speaker, almost unreal, like it belonged to another world.
Then the feed did what it always does. It began to digest the death.
Headlines formed and captions sharpened. Commentators rushed to the front of the parade with their flags already in hand. Politicians cleared their throats at podiums even before the street was fully quiet.
In the middle of all that speed, a human being lay on the other side of a screen.
Her name was Renee Nicole Good.
I say her name first because naming is where dignity begins. A name resists the machinery that turns a person into a talking point. A name also reminds you that God does not deal in categories.
“O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me.”
That is the first movement of the psalm 139. David states the truth that God knows everything. God’s knowledge has no ceiling and no border. Yet David does not talk about “everything” in the abstract. He talks about God knowing him.
God knows the small things. Sitting down. Standing up. Walking. Lying awake. God knows a word before it reaches the tongue. God knows motives, the hidden gears under the sentence you chose.
The Lord knew what I felt as I watched the video. He knew where my heart went first. He knew the instinct I had to sort this scene into a clean moral diagram.
I watched the clip. I can understand why an officer, in that compressed second, might believe he was in danger. A vehicle surging toward an officer is deadly. Metal and momentum do not need much distance to kill. A person should never drive a vehicle toward law enforcement in a tense encounter. Fear can flood an officer’s mind like cold water over the head.
And still, tragedy remains tragedy.
Her name was Renee Nicole Good.
I do not know every motive in her heart. I do not know the precise intention behind the motion of that car in that instant. Only God sees that clearly. Yet I can say this without pretending to read her soul. She was a human being who acted with a conscience that felt clean to her. She was somebody who believed something strongly enough to step into a chaotic moment. She likely thought she was doing what was right, what was necessary, what was justified.
That combination is one of the most frightening realities on earth. Sincere conviction does not guarantee wisdom. Good intentions do not stop bullets. A sense of righteousness can still lead a person into ruin.
After David states the initial truth in the Psalm, He then gives two arguments.
First, God is present everywhere, so God knows everything. David imagines the farthest reaches his mind can hold. The heights of heaven. The depths of the earth. The edge of the sea. He pictures himself riding the morning light around the world. He says, even there, God’s hand would lead him. God’s right hand would hold him.
Then David speaks about darkness. People do awful things under the cover of night. Men commit crimes thinking shadows provide protection. Yet David insists that the night shines as the day to God. Darkness and light are both alike to Him.
That is the second movement of this devotion, and it presses on us hard.
Because we have invented a new kind of darkness. It is the darkness of distance. Yet Psalm 139 says God is there too.
He is present when a politician uses a death as a lever. He is present when an official chooses language that inflames rather than clarifies. He is present when a local leader takes a microphone and speaks with urgency and anger. He is present when a million people speak before they know. He is present when we reward the fastest take and punish patience.
He is present when we reduce people into labels that keep our conscience clean.
Her name was Renee Nicole Good.
Second, David proves God’s knowledge by reminding us that God made us. David goes into the hidden place, the womb, the secret work of knitting sinew and bone. God saw him when he was unformed. God wrote his days before he lived them. David stands in awe of the craftsmanship of his own body, even in a world bent by sin.
That truth brings Renee closer, not farther away.
She was formed by God. Whatever her politics were, whatever her fears were, whatever her causes were, she was stitched together by the Lord. Her body was not an object and her breath was not a statistic. Her life was not raw material for a culture war.
God made her. God knew her. God numbered her days.
That does not answer every question about what happened. It does not remove the need for careful investigation. It does not erase the responsibility of anyone involved. It does not make wise what may have been foolish. And it does not make innocent what may have been sinful.
It does something else. It restores the weight of personhood.
Now David applies the truth, and Psalm 139 becomes even more searching. The psalm does not leave us with information about God. It drives us toward response.
“How precious are thy thoughts unto me, O God.”
God’s knowledge of the believer is attentive love. It is the Shepherd counting steps. David pictures himself falling asleep while trying to count the Lord’s thoughts, then waking to discover God’s presence never broke.
That line cuts against the way our world treats Renee. The world’s attention will move on. Another clip will replace this clip. Another outrage will overwrite this outrage. Another name will become the next day’s symbol.
God does not move on from names the crowd forgets.
If Renee belonged to Christ, then the Lord who searched her also held her. If she did not, then the God who formed her still saw her, still witnessed the moment, still hears every word spoken about her by people who will never meet her family.
Then David turns his face toward wickedness and recoils. Sin is never performed in private. Every rebellion is carried out before the eyes of God. That realization makes David tremble at evil. He takes God’s holiness seriously.
That fear needs to fall on every heart that is eager to use this death.
It needs to fall on the right and on the left. It needs to fall on the people who cheer any use of force and the people who demonize every use of force. It needs to fall on every one of us who enjoys our own outrage.
Fear of God makes a man careful with human beings.
Fear of God makes you refuse to celebrate when the “other side” bleeds.
Fear of God makes you slow down and say, out loud, her name.
Her name was Renee Nicole Good.
This knowledge of God leads us to pray.
“Search me, O God… try me… see if there be any wicked way in me… lead me in the way everlasting.”
That is where the gospel must come in, because Psalm 139 exposes sin with a bright, steady light. Exposure alone cannot save you. A mirror can show dirt on your face. A mirror cannot wash it off.
We have dirt on our souls. We have dehumanized people. We have enjoyed contempt. We have made our neighbors into categories. We have used words like rocks.
So God did not merely send a lecture. He sent a Person.
Jesus Christ stepped into our world and received what dehumanization always produces. He was reduced to labels. Threat. Blasphemer. Criminal. Trouble-maker. His accusers stripped Him down to a category that made their violence feel righteous. Soldiers treated Him like an object. Crowds treated Him like entertainment. He was nailed up in public, the ultimate act of turning a person into a thing.
The sin Psalm 139 exposes reached its ugliest flower at Calvary.
Then Christ did the unthinkable. He prayed for the people who dehumanized Him. He bore their guilt. He carried the wrath our contempt deserves. He died for the ones who love categories more than neighbors. He rose again on the third day, breaking the power of death, offering forgiveness to sinners who have trained their tongues to wound.
That is the good news. God knows you completely, and in Christ He saves you completely.
So when I pray Psalm 139, I pray it through the cross and empty tomb.
Search me, Lord, because You already see my thumb hovering over the share button. You already know the caption I want to write. You already hear the tone I am about to use. You already see the satisfaction I can feel when I land a sentence that wins applause.
Try me. Refine me. Burn away the dross that loves conflict more than Christ.
Lead me in the way everlasting.
Teach me to name people again. Teach me to mourn honestly. Teach me to seek truth patiently. Teach me to refuse the pleasure of contempt. Teach me to speak as if every word is spoken in Your presence, because it is.
Her name was Renee Nicole Good.
Lord Jesus, have mercy on her family. Give them help that feels solid, like a hand under an elbow. Give investigators courage and clarity. Give officers wisdom and restraint. Give leaders fear of God. Give our nation repentance.
And give Your church clean lips, so that in a world that grinds people into labels, we become a people who see faces, speak names, tell the truth, and hold out the crucified and risen Christ as the only hope that can heal hearts like ours.