Chapter 14: The Miracle Of Easter, Psalm 139

Psalm 139:13-16
“For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.”
           
     I honestly don’t remember exactly where, when or how I stumbled onto this psalm. It was sometime in the last couple weeks, and I remember being immediately captivated by David’s poetry of God’s perfect knowledge of mankind. Just a few verses before the passage I quoted above, David asks his creator where he can flee that God will not find him? Whether heaven or hell or the highest mountain or the uttermost parts of the sea, David marvels that God will always find him and be with him, no matter what. (This brought to mind that children’s book where a small child asks his mother if she will still be able to find him no matter what animal he becomes and where he hides. The mother answers that she will always find and love her precious son, no matter what.)
            Then I read the four verses that I quoted above, and I had to stop short. I read them again and again, soaking in the words that were at once familiar and suddenly brand new. Somewhere in my early childhood I had memorized verses 13 and 14. Now, pairing them with verses 15 and 16 I was struck by David’s message, especially in verse 16: "Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them."
           For the last two weeks I have not been able to get this verse out of my head. God knew me before I was even conceived! He had numbered all my days, had written my whole life from beginning to end, before I was even born. I have been trying to wrap my puny, finite mind around this inconceivable, quantum-sized yet massively cosmological concept. How does a being that exists outside our known space and time, a being that has always been and always shall be, a being that knows my entire life’s story before it’s even begun, a being more vast and omnipresent than the universe He created, have any interest at all in the comparatively insignificant, finite, puny beings that He created but who then immediately disobeyed and rejected Him?
            God could have started over. He had no obligation to Adam and Eve whatsoever. He could have wiped them from existence with a single, spoken word. And, in fact, a millennium or so later, He did wipe out all of the human race and started over with just Noah and his family. And even then, mankind has still behaved towards God with great rebellion and sin. In my own life, I declared a long time ago that God didn’t exist. I even said at one point to myself, in the deepest dark of my teenage despair that I hated God. I hated Him for the way He had made me.
           And yet, according to Psalm 139:16, God knew every word, every action, every rebellious thought that I would hurl at Him before I was even born. He also knew the day I would raise my eyes to the night sky behind the neon streetlamps six months ago and whisper a sinner’s prayer of forgiveness and surrender. He knows the exact time and day of my death or if I’ll still be alive the day that His son returns in the clouds to rapture the believers home. He knows my every choice, my every thought, my every deed before I make any of them, and He has always kept me wrapped in His arms my whole life, patiently waiting until I was finally ready to wholly and completely surrender to Him.
          I have been trying to understand not only the very existence and nature of God, but, more importantly, the depth and power of that kind of love. I have failed at both counts. Instead, I have only been able to quote verse 14 over and over. “I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well.” My soul understands what my frail, limited mind cannot: that God, my Lord and Creator, my Great Savior, loves me in spite of my sin nature; in spite of all I have said and done against him; in spite of all my failures, both past and future.
            He loved me enough to provide a way for my salvation.
            Tomorrow is Easter Sunday. It’s the day we who believe in God and what His son did for us on the cross celebrate Jesus’ resurrection and His victory over death. This is a Bible story that I have known my whole life. I have sat through countless sermons and Sunday School lessons and family devotionals, and I have listened to my parents, my teachers, and my pastor expound on the greatest truth found in God’s Holy Word. This is the foundation of our faith, the only reason and sole hope of our frail, finite human existence. I know the timeline, the major events starting with the last supper, to the Christ’s anguished, desperate prayer to His heavenly father in the Garden of Gethsemane,  to the moment of death and the earthquake that tore the temple veil in two. I know that Peter denied his Lord three times, that the trial was a mockery, that Christ knew that Judas would betray Him, and that Pontius Pilate washed his hands of the matter after his wife told him she’d suffered a restless night of strange dreams about this particular Jewish rabbi.
            I know about the crown of thorns, the beatings, the piercing of His side, the blood and vinegar that flowed from the wound, the nails that were driven into his hands and feet, the excruciating pain and extreme suffering that he endured while hanging there for many hours. I also know about the two thieves – one who acknowledged the lordship of Christ, and the other who stubbornly refused to believe in spite of the evidence right before his own eyes. I know that Christ finally gave up the ghost by raising His weary, bloodied head to the darkened sky and crying, “It is finished!”
      I know that He was laid in the tomb after being wrapped carefully and reverently by his followers as they wept with great sorrow and grief. I know that on the morning of the third day, when Mary and Martha came to the tomb, and when they found the stone rolled away and Jesus’ body gone, that they were both afraid and thoroughly confused. I also know that the angel of the Lord asked them, “Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, for he is risen as he promised! Go, and tell his disciples the good news!” And so they did.
     I have known that story my whole life, every gory and heartbreaking detail. I have memorized many verses from the four gospels that speak of that great story. But, until this year, I have never known it in my heart and soul.
         The God that David speaks of in Psalm 139 has known all my comings and goings, all of my thoughts and words, all my choices and heartbreaks, all my joys and accomplishments, all my times of deepest sorrows and despairs, before I was even conceived in my mother’s womb. He knows me from the very molecules of the protein strands of my DNA to every spiritual corner of my soul. His fingerprints are stamped into my genetic code, and He has loved me always.
          I cannot fathom this, and my heart breaks as I contemplate the act of sacrifice that His son made on that cross on Golgotha’s Hill two millennia ago. Just writing those paragraphs describing the story of His death and resurrection has caused me to weep for what I did to send Him there. He bore the sin of ALL mankind – past, present and future – on that cross. That glorious, wonderous, terrible cross. He died for you, and He died for me.
          Three months ago I started to expand my Apple music library with new albums and songs by current Christian singers and songwriters. One of them, Chris Tomlin, has a song called “The Wonderful Cross”. It’s his own arrangement of the hymn by Isaac Watts titled “When I Survey The Wonderous Cross.” I have been playing this song over and over during my daily commutes to work.
 
When I survey the wonderous cross/On which the prince of glory died/My richest gain I count but loss/And pour contempt on all my pride
See from His head, His hands, His feet/Sorrow and love flow mingled down/Did e’er such love and sorrow meet/Or thorns compose so rich a crown
 
And now Chris’ own chorus:
Oh the wonderful cross/Oh the wonderful cross/Bids me come and die and find that I may truly live/Oh the wonderful cross/Oh the wonderful cross/All who gather here by grace draw near and bless Your name
 
This verse by Watts is what gets me every time:
Were the whole realm of nature mine/That were an offering far too small/Love so amazing, so divine/Demands my soul, my life, my all
 
        "I come before you, O Lord God, a sinner saved by grace. I recognize that I am not worthy of Your love, Your mercy, or Your forgiveness. But You loved me so greatly and so deeply that You sent Your only son to be born of a virgin, to live as one of us, and then to die by our filthy, vile hands so that we could all be washed beneath His pure blood. By this, You gave us a way to salvation, and all that I have to do is accept this gift by praying and believing in Your name. There is nothing that I could ever do on my own to attain this, and I promise You, O God, that for as long as I live, as long as You give me the ability to draw breath, that I will give You nothing less than my soul, my life, and my all.
            Amen."