Intimately Known

Psalm 139:13-18

13You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body

and knit me together in my mother’s womb.

14Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!

Your workmanship is marvelous—and how well I know it.

15You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion,

as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.

16You saw me before I was born.

Every day of my life was recorded in your book.

Every moment was laid out

before a single day had passed.

17How precious are your thoughts about me, O God!

They are innumerable!

18I can’t even count them;

they outnumber the grains of sand!

And when I wake up in the morning,

you are still with me!

Henry Ward Beecher, the famous nineteenth-century preacher, once said that an astronomer who didn’t believe in God must be crazy, but a physiologist who didn’t believe in God would be crazier yet. Why? Because the human body is the “most exquisite and wonderful organization which has come to us from the divine hand.”

Shakespeare’s Hamlet would agree. “What a piece of work is man!” he said. “How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable!”

But to the psalmist the wonder of it all was that this God—who superintended the psalmist’s formation when he was still in his mother’s womb—cared for him and was with him.

This was also the thought of Saint Patrick, the great Irish missionary of the fifth century. He loved the Bible, and after his death, it was required of Irish schoolchildren that they memorize the Psalms. The “Hymn of Saint Patrick,” or “The Breastplate” as it is sometimes known, illustrates this same idea that our Lord knows us through and through. Its words are as follows:

Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me,

Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me,

Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,

Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

SAINT PATRICK, TRANSLATED BY CECIL FRANCIS ALEXANDER

Notable Quotable

“Nothing takes God by surprise. He knows the future and can therefore guide us through its trackless ways.”

W. T. PURKISER