Week 1: Fearfully and Wonderfully Made
For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb.
14 I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.
15 My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Psalm 139:13–15
Before the invention of Sonar during World War I, scientists believed the ocean floor was flat and featureless. It wasn’t until the 1920s that oceanographers had collected enough evidence forcing them to admit there was more to the sea floor’s story - there were canyons, cliffs, mountain ranges, and deep trenches.
Many thousands of years prior, King David wrote a Psalm, praising the Lord for protecting him from his pursuer, Saul. Psalm 18 raises passionate worship to a Mighty Protector, a “rock” and “fortress” whose very breath made the earth “tremble and shake.” In fact, in the smoke of this Protector’s wrath,
Then the channels of waters were seen, and the foundations of the world were discovered at thy rebuke, O LORD, At the blast of the breath of thy nostrils. (Psalm 18:15)
How could King David know, thousands of years before sonar and deep sea mapping technology, that there were “valleys” under the sea? The Holy Spirit, who inspired this Psalm, knew. Because the Lord knows the world He made.
That means He knows you. He doesn’t just know about you—the color of your eyes, your quirky sense of humor, your small inner anxieties and hopes. Just like He knew about the extravagant topography of the ocean floor long before we did, He knows you better than you might even know yourself. He knows how you are made and why you are made. He knows the hairs on your head, the number of your days, and the purpose for which He made you.
The same is true for every human being. That’s the thing about Psalm 139—it is not an exclusive Psalm. The story it tells is not contingent on who is telling it. Just as sure as we can know that every human person comes from a mother’s womb, we can know that it is the Lord alone who knits every person together. It is only the Lord’s care, His attention, His creativity and artistry, and deep love that could make something like us, with our impossibly intricate biological processes and our billions of different faces and thought patterns and personalities that never repeat.
But we aren’t only known by Him. In being known, we are also loved.
If God knows and loves everything He makes, we are wrapped into the love of God even while we are in our mother’s womb, where He knits us together. Jesus died for those who are even today in their mother’s womb. Each of us has inherent dignity and purpose from that moment onward; and though we can be physically killed, the love He has for us from that moment never can.
Let us pray for God to be a “rock,” a “fortress,” a “Mighty Protector” over the children He is knitting together, even this very moment, in their mothers’ wombs. Let us thank Him for His deep love for us, and His awe inspiring creativity with which He brings more people into the world.
Psalm 8:1–4 O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! Who hast set thy glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, That thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger. When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, The moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? And the son of man, that thou visitest him?
Psalm 127:3–5 Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: And the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; So are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: They shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.
Mark 10:15–16 Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein. And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them.
Matthew 18:3–5 and said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me.
Ecclesiastes 11:5 As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child: even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all.
Psalm 82:3–4 Defend the poor and fatherless: Do justice to the afflicted and needy. Deliver the poor and needy: Rid them out of the hand of the wicked.
