“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! 
Were I to count them, 
    they would outnumber the grains of sand— 
    when I awake, I am still with you.“

Psalm 139:13-18 

–

JULY 17, 2025

When I was pregnant with my firstborn (who turns 19 next week!) I was constantly astonished. (I was also constantly exhausted, sick, and in pain but that’s another story). Somehow, while I was using my conscious mind and body to sit at a desk or walk across the yard or climb the stairs, my body was also creating a new person. How could this be?! 

Each week I would get an email announcing that this week was around the time the ear drum was formed—or the spinal column built—or a heart chamber made—and I was astonished. I had no idea how to build an ear drum! And yet my body was doing it. I walked around in a cloud of stunned astonishment day and night.  

So I resonate with today’s words from Psalm 139. The psalmist had far less information about what happens in a womb that I do, yet we are both moved over the wonder of it. Even with all we know, there is no one who understands life and consciousness.  

When my babies were finally born, I held their newborn bodies in my arms and continued to be astonished. This brand-new person! This is who I had been building all along! And as I looked backward in stunned disbelief I looked forward in stunned disbelief too, for having been entrusted with such a weighty responsibility, I had no way of knowing what lay ahead.  

So with the psalmist we raise our voices in praise to God who, though this knowledge is too lofty for us to grasp, has knit us together in our mothers’ wombs, and knows the story of each and every day of our lives before one of them has come to be.  

Questions for reflection and discussion:  

  • What does it mean to you that God knew you before you were born? 
  • What does it mean to you that every day of your life is known by God already? 
  • How do these ideas lead us to worship?  

Church Reading Plan: Joshua 24; Acts 4