Psalm 139

Liz Dumain shares what Psalm 139 has meant to her

Liz Dumain

There are some passages in the Bible that are as familiar to us as old friends. When we come to them, we think we know what God is going to say and so their very words feel either like a warm blanket, or make us slightly anxious as we remember yet again that life is a journey of ups and downs.

Psalm 139 is like that for me. God has used it so many times in my life to remind me how much he loves me; how much he understands me and that he has an incredible plan for my life. He's also spoken through those final challenging verses to remind me that he knows all and yet loves me still.

For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.

How precious to me are your thoughts, God!
How vast is the sum of them!

If I were to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand
when I awake, I am still with you.

If we take the time to really engage with these words, this Psalm both reassures and challenges at the same time. If we take time to really contemplate the constant presence and care for us from the creator of the universe, it conveys the comfort of his constant presence and the challenge of his all-knowing.

It reminds us that we are created and that we didn't just happen to come together in some random accident; that there was a plan, like a divine knitting pattern that God worked on in fine detail, so that we might be exactly the people that he wanted. We are loved from the top of our heads to the soles of our feet. You are the very person he wanted when he picked up his 'wool and needles' to create the next person for earth!

But sometimes when I think about that incredible fact, it puzzles me; because I know I'm complicated. I can be predictable, surprising, puzzling and just downright confusing. I get moody and I neglect God and baffle my friends and even myself sometimes! Sometimes it feels like I have spent most of my life trying to be less complicated; more straightforward and easier to understand. I'm sure I'm not alone in having things about me that make me feel more like God's accident than God's divine design. I wonder what it is for you?

But then one day as I read this familiar Psalm, I realised that 'fearfully and wonderfully made' includes 'complicated'. What a relief! God created me exactly as I am...complicated. He delights in this and he isn't waiting for me to 'sort myself out' before his love, power and presence can be released into my life; it's happening now. My very 'complicated-ness' is a reflection of his glorious complexity. My changing emotions reflect his divine passion for humankind and my unpredictability - well, whoever said God was predictable?

This Psalm drives home the reality of God's presence in our lives and his joy in who we are. It reminds us that we reflect him in every aspect of our being, the obvious and the more complex. I don't know what your equivalent of my complicated is, but I do know that it is covered in 'fearfully and wonderfully made'.

So as I praise him today for making me complicated, will you join me in praise and thanks for his joy in the you that you are?