I Will Give Thanks To You For…

“I will give thanks to you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; wonderful are Your works, and my soul knows it very well.” Psalm 139:14

Psalm 139 is The Intimate Psalm in that it explores and celebrates how intimately God knows us, which is grounded in His intimate creation of us and His intimate purpose for us. The psalm reflects on this intimacy from the womb, “you  wove me in my mother’s womb”, to the vicissitudes of life, “If I ascend to heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, behold you are there”. It culminates in a desire to know God intimately, realizing that just as God created us that only God can purify us and draw us to Himself, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my thoughts; and see if there be any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way.” Perhaps Paul expresses this desire to be intimate with God as God is intimate with us when he writes, “Then I shall know even as I am known.”

A foundation for a life of thanksgiving is the simple recognition that, “I exist, there are profound mysteries within me, ranging from the physiological to the emotional to the intellectual, to the desire of the will, of hope, of joy, of love, and of those things that have the potential to destroy myself and others. I did not create myself, and the complexity of ‘I’ is not accidental, I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

In Romans Chapter One Paul argues “that which is known about God” is evident within us and, “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what He has made…” Later in Romans Paul will discuss the role of conscience in life, that baseline innate sense humanity has of right and wrong, good and evil.

While many of the Psalms and other Bible passages direct our attention to the wonders of Creation outside us, Psalm 139 invites us to view the wonders of Creation within us. Who understands our capacity for love and hate? Where does our sense of beauty come from? How can we do such sublime good one moment and engage in evil (if not in action then in thought) the next? How can we put others first at 11:00 AM and live narcissistically at 11:11 AM?

Something is amiss, we are not as we should be - but the One who created us is also the One who loves us and desires to redeem us and heal us and bring us into an intimate relationship with Himself through Jesus Christ.

Many of us move so fast through each day that we forget who we are and in doing so we forget God; we forget God and as a result forget who we are. Outside of the Kingdom of God and the Bible we are spoken to as though we are simply biological machines to be repaired when broken; we are “dysfunctional”, we have “breakdowns”, we are “resources”. Sadly we have come to think of ourselves in mechanical and functional terms.

Psalm 139 invites us to stop and to be quiet, to turn the electronics off, to turn the noise of life off, to silence the smartphone and put it in another room.

Let Psalm 139 help us to listen, and as we listen let us allow this psalm to help us to respond.

“O LORD, You have searched me and known me, You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar. You scrutinize my path and my lying down, and are intimately acquainted with all my ways.”

I exist, you exist, and there are profound mysteries within us, mysteries designed by our Creator, some of these are fractured mysteries which He desires to redeem and in so doing restore us to health and wholeness. Let us stop and ponder, be quiet and listen, and respond in conversation with God - let us remember who God is and who we are. Let us be thankful.

“I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made…”