Wonderfully Complex

Monday, September 27, 2021

O Lord, you have examined my heart and know everything about me.  You know when I sit down or stand up.  You know my thoughts even when I’m far away.  You see me when I travel and when I rest at home.  You know everything I do.  You know what I am going to say even before I say it, Lord.  You go before me and follow me.  You place your hand of blessing on my head.  Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too great for me to understand!  I can never escape from your Spirit!  I can never get away from your presence!  If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to the grave, you are there.  If I ride the wings of the morning,  if I dwell by the farthest oceans, even there your hand will guide me, and your strength will support me.  I could ask the darkness to hide me and the light around me to become night—but even in darkness I cannot hide from you.  To you the night shines as bright as day.  Darkness and light are the same to you.  You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb.  Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!  Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.  You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.  You 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.  How precious are your thoughts about me, O God.  They cannot be numbered!  I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand!  And when I wake up, you are still with me!  Psalm 139:1-18

There is a sense inside each of us that wants our lives to count for something; we want to be more than just a social security number, or part of a government demographic…just another vote in the booth.  We want to be noticed, seen for the accomplishments of not merely breathing and surviving a number of years before departing planet earth, but being useful, and important to others.  On the inside we understand (to some degree) just how wonderfully-complex is the machine that houses who we are.  We are souls, created with body and spirit, and God made each of us with a plan, entirely crafted with love, by the unbridled consideration of eternal and divine omniscience and wisdom. 

Whatever God did in crafting the human experience, it is much too wonderfully complex for a three minute devotion.  But this much we can say, David, today’s Psalmist knew it well…and marvelled.  That is to say David worshipped at the thought of how much thought God put into sculpting who we are, and the good plans he has for each of us.  And the moment you insert the word “good” in any sentence, it, and anything attached to the thought, is immediately connected with the eternal character of God, who alone is good, and desires good in our lives.

Whatever is good and perfect is a gift coming down to us from God our Father, who created all the lights in the heavens. He never changes or casts a shifting shadow.  James 1:17

For You Today

Here we are, wonderfully-complex creatures, objects of divine worth, thought about constantly by our Creator, who is a loving and good Father.  So, what’s it going to be today…moaning about not getting the exact shade of midnight blue on that BMW?  Or letting the joy of God’s loving hand form that silly grin you’ll walk around with as you serve Him and bathe in His love?

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!   

[1] Title and Other Images:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©    

 

Words Over the Womb

 

Wednesday, March 3, 2021

Yet you brought me safely from my mother’s womb and led me to trust you at my mother’s breast.  I was thrust into your arms at my birth.  You have been my God from the moment I was born.

Let the rich of the earth feast and worship.  Bow before him, all who are mortal, all whose lives will end as dust.  Our children will also serve him.  Future generations will hear about the wonders of the Lord.  His righteous acts will be told to those not yet born.  They will hear about everything he has done.  Psalm 22:9-10, 29-31

Our Psalm this morning is an appropriate picture in the days leading to Easter.  It is Messianic, graphically-so, considering the middle verses’ depiction of one in severe pain and dehydration, something any human would experience when pinned by nails to a cross. ^{(see Psalm 22:11-18)}

But something else cast a large shadow across my mind as I read the entire Psalm. I saw the promise of God’s Word to those in the womb, particularly those who will never see the cradle, those yet not born, whose lives are cut short in abortion.  This Psalm casts a mantle of responsibility over those who claim the name of Christ to speak words over the womb to the next generation – words of reconciliation, healing, and comfort in God’s name.

I have often been reminded of the tenuous nature of the faith once-delivered to the saints, for which we, according to our Lord’s brother, Jude, must earnestly contend.  Some (or most) of that “contending” is passing the faith along, like a baton, handed to the next runner in a relay race.  The danger of dropping the baton is always most vulnerable in the handoff, as the finishing runner stretches to offer it to the one who will carry it in the next leg of the race.  To drop the baton is to forfeit the race.  Words over the womb are a sacred promise we speak to faithfully hold the Gospel as a womb faithfully holds the unborn.

King David, writer of this precious Psalm, recounted God’s faithfulness in the delivery from his mother’s womb to learning in childhood of God’s goodness.  David would not live a perfect life, but living that life as a child of faith was not in question.  And David, as his forbears did, passed along the faith to the next generation, Solomon.  And so on.

We live in a generation conditioned to believe that abortion is a right granted by our laws.  That lethal legality is affirmed nearly one million times a year in this country, thousands of souls for whom life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is not granted as a right.

About 50 years ago I was sitting across the table from a couple in their thirties, helping them to apply for an insurance policy.  As part of the application I was recording both of their medical histories.  In asking the wife about previous hospital stays she said, without expression, abortion.  Thinking I’d mis-heard what she said, I asked her to repeat it.  She said, abortion…end the pregnancy.  I knew the Supreme Court had made it the law of the land.  I knew abortion clinics existed.  I assumed it wasn’t a conspiracy theory.  I just had never met a living, breathing person who became the face of reality for what that meant.  I wrote the words on the application, but it was like jabbing the pen point into my eye.

Admittedly, I knew nothing of that couple’s struggle, and the why of their decision.  I only sensed the tragedy of a soul denied his or her first breath.  And how the mantle of parenthood was rejected, never speaking words of hope, reconciliation, and healing over the womb.

I do know that moment was the point in time when my heart surrendered to preserving the sanctity of life in whatever I do.

For You Today

God said “thou shalt not kill”.  It’s that simple.  God alone is the judge of what is right and wrong, and that extends far past the law of the land, all the way to the thoughts and intents of the mind and heart.  It may not happen in this generation that abortion is returned to the abyss, but this generation can turn towards God in obedience, and march toward the day when words of life – not death – are spoken over the womb. 

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

[1] Title Image:  Courtesy of Pixabay.com    Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©

Subway Sermon

[i]

Wednesday, July 26, 2017

You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb.  Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!  Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.  You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.  You 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.  How precious are your thoughts about me, O God.  They cannot be numbered!  I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand!  And when I wake up, you are still with me!  Psalm 139:13-18^(NLT)

We wandered, my bride and I, into the sandwich shop unknowing we were going to be running smack into a Subway sermon!  We went through the process of ordering.   Elizabeth chose  her sandwich, low calorie, low fat, healthy stuff (naturally), and the preacher opted for his normal stuff too…stuff as much stuff as possible on that big ol’ hunk of bread!  While the server used a backhoe to load up my sandwich, I slipped over to the drink cooler to grab a Diet Coke™ to go with my diet sandwich. 

And there it was!!  Or rather, there was RUSSELL!

I couldn’t believe the Subway people knew I would be there that day, and were nice enough to put my monogrammed Diet Russell Coke right up front! 

Wow, what service!

Now, I’m not certain the Subway folks had really planned for my visit, making that one bottle with “Russell” on it because they knew I’d be there.  It was one of perhaps a thousand bottles of Diet Coke I’ve had, and have never seen a Russell bottle!

But the coincidence of finding your name staring back at you is kind of cool, and really interesting, as it reminded me of the Psalmist’s awe when he recalled just how intimately God had known him from before he was a gleam in his earthly father’s eye.

This leads me quite naturally to the whole idea of what many call a fetus.  Now, I know that’s the technical name for the little person being formed in the womb of a woman; I prefer, however, to call that little person a baby. 

And that Diet Coke bottle is a little example of contrast as to why a fetus is a baby to me.  In the manufacturing buildings of Coca Cola, some marketing genius thought it would be a good idea to put names on the bottles.  Great strategy, that…people love to be recognized…even if it’s only an impersonal printed label with their name.  They put thousands, perhaps millions of Janes, Johns, Bills, Harrys and Joans…and perhaps a few Russells on cases and cases of Cokes.  The chances are some crossed paths with people who had those names.  Right place, right time, and the coincidence made Coke fans!

Contrast that with a God who knows not only the possibilities of how many Russells might be out there, but actually knows all the Russells, personally, and even better than Russell knows Russell.  In fact, before Russell was born, this God knew all about what he would be named, what he would look like, and what his whole life would be about.  And this God knows all the Janes, Johns, Bills and all the rest just that intimately.  He knows our rising and our lying down, our goodness and the blackest thought we’ve ever entertained.  He knows all about us, and loves us deeply; in fact God is so mad in love with each of us He was willing to die for us, so we could experience eternal life.

Somehow, that’s a whole lot better than coming face to face with a marketing scheme coincidence in a sandwich shop!

For You Today

It’s no coincidence that He knows your name; he’s the one who inspired your parents to put that name on you!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road…have a blessed day!

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NOTES

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[i] Title Image: Ian Thomson, via Wikimedia Commons