Summer of Psalms – Part 2

 

As Christians we love getting caught up in the majesty of God, we love to look towards how great, how wide and vast he is. Psalm 139 has always managed to encapsulate these thoughts for me.

If you spilt it into the 3 separate section, 1 verse always seems to nail it within the context.

The first part picks it, saying, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.” Then the second part says, “If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.” Then in the 3rd section “Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand when I awake, I am still with you.” All this is incredible stuff, looking to how incredible and just huge God is.

But I always got caught up looking at this, when actually the whole focus of the Psalm is so much more personal, in writing this, I went to look at the root words for that first section, that first use of the word searching in verse 1, means to intimately examine, and then in verse 2 it says “you know when I sit and when I rise,” the root means to care. Then later in verse 5 where it says “You hem me in” it means to enclose and fortify, not just wedging us in but protecting us around the war the wages around us. That’s just to pick into the intricacies of the wording, but when we look at the face value, verse 10, “your right hand will hold me fast.” The intimacy of holding someone’s hand, then the intimacy of being “knit together in my mother’s womb,” the intimacy between the yarn, needles and creator. And then verse 16 “Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” Every single day, is ordained for us. Not just generic, but personal, intimate. I ask the question, when we read his word, when we seek him in prayer, how often do we get so caught up in God’s vastness to forget about how personal he is, how intimate his love is for just us, just you. How intricately he wove YOU, that the creator of the Earth, decided that his creation needed YOU for ‘such a time as this’. So while yes, worship the God who is too vast to comprehend, but don’t lose sight of the God who knows YOU, sees YOU, cares for YOU.

 

Prayer Points

  • That we recognize God’s intimate, personal and intricate love for us.
  • That we will recognize but not get lost in God’s majesty and power.
  • That in all of our situations we will feel God’s hand hold us fast.

 

Written by Josh Bennett, Intern for Swindon Youth for Christ