Our Wondrous God: Marvelous Beyond Understanding in Psalm 139
Our Wondrous God: Marvelous Beyond Understanding in Psalm 139.
“O the depth of the riches and the wisdom and knowledge of God! What a deep wealth of wisdom and knowledge He has! How incomprehensible are His decisions, how unsearchable His judgments! How undiscoverable are His paths, how mysterious His ways, beyond finding out! Who has understood the mind of Yahweh? Who knows how the LORD thinks, or what His thoughts are? Can anyone discern the LORD’s intentions, His motivations? Who knows enough to give Him advice? Is there anyone qualified to be His counselor? Who has given Him so much that He needs to pay it back? Who could ever have a claim against Him? For everything was created by Him, everything lives through Him, and everything exists for Him; So to Him must be given the glory forever! Amen!” (Romans 11:33-36, also Isaiah 40:12-14).
An Extended Meditation. In Psalm 139, the psalmist David offers to all of us his profound and poetic insights into the wondrous nature and works of Creator God. First, he dives into how Lord Yahweh knows everything there is to know, and how he is everywhere there is to go. David confesses that he is awestruck by even what little he is privileged to know about Him, and that what he understands to be true is nonetheless far beyond his comprehension.
Psalm 139:1-6 = “O Lord, You have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Yahweh, You know it altogether. Behind me and before me, you hem me in and rest your hand of blessing upon me. Such amazing knowledge is too wondrous (“pili”) for me, too lofty for me to understand, and I cannot grasp it.”
Psalm 139:7-12 = “Where shall I go from Your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there! If I make my bed in the place of the dead, You are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall Your hand lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me. If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,’ even the darkness is not dark to You; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with You.”
Pili (pil-ee) = the Hebrew word which means: wondrous; miraculous; unsurpassed; something so wonderful that it is beyond comprehension; remarkable, extraordinary, marvelous; so awesome it cannot be understood by humans; so amazing that it seems impossible or too difficult to accomplish; so uniquely set apart from human understanding that it is God’s secret. The two related forms of “pili” which mean the same thing are ”pala” and “pele.”
Psalm 139:13-16 = “You formed my innermost being, shaping my delicate inside and my intricate outside, and knitted them all together in my mother’s womb. I praise You and thank You, God, for making me so mysteriously complex, for awesomely setting me apart! Wondrous are all Your works, for everything You do is marvelously breathtaking! My inner being deeply knows this very well, and it simply amazes me to think about it! How thoroughly You know me, Lord. My frame was not hidden from You as You formed every bone in my body and created me in the secret place… carefully, skillfully, shaping me from nothing to something. Your eyes have seen my unformed substance. You saw who You created me to be before I became an embryo!”
A Never Before Seen Look At Human Life In The Womb | Baby Olivia
Every Person is Sacred. Scripture is clear about God creating human beings, living souls, in His original creation (Genesis 1-2). And because He loves humanity with all His heart, made in His image, and He wants to keep a hand in, He continues His creation by forming every human being that is conceived on planet earth. In Psalm 139:13-16, David beautifully describes what this ongoing work of God looks like. Different translations of this passage offer helpful ways of looking at this God-directed process of fetal life in the womb: shaped from the inside out; woven together; formed in secret; sculpted from nothing into something; textured in the depths; embroidered in the dark; skillfully wrought; and intricately woven. This is all picturing God at work with every unborn person! In verse 16, David observes through the Spirit that God saw his substance “yet unformed” in the womb. The Tanakh Jewish Bible says, “Your eyes saw my unformed limbs.” The Message says it this way, “Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth – all the stages of my life were spread out before you.” In the original Hebrew, verse 16 literally points to the growing fetus… “Your eyes could see me as an embryo.” (New Jerusalem Bible). Father God is still working, and that includes His hidden workplace in the womb of every pregnant woman. Isn’t it mind-boggling to consider that this unformed substance, this embryo in the womb, is merely in the beginning stages and yet is even now made in the image of God? “My Father is always working, and so am I.” (John 5:17).
Thus, Every Womb is Sacred. The mother’s womb isn’t that difficult to define. The womb is the physical organ of the woman that is constructed of muscles and ligaments and blood vessels that encircle the fetus, making a safe place for the unborn baby to grow and develop within the pregnant mother; a protected shelter that completely surrounds the growing child in the womb; a quiet and peaceful refuge, a nourishing sanctuary, and a life-giving haven for the developing unborn baby; the protective barrier that guards the growing fetus from outside danger. Creator God designed a safe place within each woman’s body to offer safe harbor to a growing baby when the woman is pregnant. This womb is of course necessary for a fetus to bond with its mother, to develop in peace, to be enveloped in loving nourishment, to grow in the security and trust needed to develop in a healthy way. This secure shelter within the pregnant woman prepares the baby to grow to the point where it will survive outside the womb. In the womb, the unborn baby is literally surrounded by a divinely designed system to protect and feed and cherish the child within her. The woman’s womb is the sanctuary in which the strongest human bond of love is established, the bond between mother and child.
Mercy-Womb. Womb is one of the root words for mercy in the Hebrew Bible. The word “rachem” is translated in Scripture as mercy, compassion, and womb. In the Hebrew mind, the womb is much more than the sacred place in a woman that enables the unborn baby to safely develop till birth. Womb also became a metaphor for mercy because of its linguistic roots. The Hebrew word rachem is intended to mean mercy-womb. God formed each of us with rachem when we were mere unborns, and we were conceived and nourished within His rachem, the mother’s mercy-womb. The baby within the woman is the ideal time to extend God’s compassion to that human being inside of her. The developing baby utterly depends on a mercy-womb. And God wants Himself to be experienced as our womb-sanctuary, our safe place in Him, our refuge and shelter. God Himself yearns to be experienced as a womb of mercy for each of us, a refuge and shelter and safe haven. The purpose of our lives is to live in God’s rachem, God’s womb of love.
Psalm 139:17-18 = “How precious to me are Your thoughts, O God, how weighty they are! How vast is the sum of them! If I could count them, they are more that the sand, more than the grains of sand on every shore on earth. I awake, and I am still with You.”
Remembering the Wonder of God. God is who He is. God will be who He will be…. beyond our comprehension; the Center of creation on whom all things depend; a mystery surpassing the reach of our minds; greater than all reason and knowledge; impossible to define in His divine nature. Anything we are blessed to see of Him are the merest of hints, barely audible echoes. As Job once said, we are merely on the borders of his ways. Both Hands… So let us lift both hands to honor and revere our ineffable God. On the one hand, it would be disobedient to refrain from keeping His Name holy. We are instructed to make sure his Name is kept sacred. We are asked to pay close attention to those qualities of His that are within our reach. But on the other hand, it is also true that we need to trust in God’s holy and mysterious namelessness, to surrender to His wonderful transcendent nature. While concentrating on God’s known particulars, we acknowledge and rest in the unknowable Whole of His Being.
“Almighty God, to You all hearts are open, all desires known, and from You no secrets are hid; Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of Your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love You, and worthily magnify Your holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.” (BCP)
Psalm 139 (Far Too Wonderful – Lyrics) ~ Shane and Shane