Unfathomable!

After graduating from high school, I did what many girls did if they didn’t plan to go to college or get married, I got a job in one of the factories in our city. I went to work in the General Electric factory making radios and record players. My job was to sit in front of an assembly line and put diodes in a circuit board. The line moved along (swiftly) and as it pasted me I put in my 6-10 diodes. Very tedious work but the money was good at a whopping $2.02 an hour. After I did my part, someone else did theirs and on and on the little circuit board went until finally the radio was complete and was put into a cabinet with a record player. Eventually it could be put into boxes and sold to those who could afford such a luxury.

I wondered back then, who could come up with such a genius thing? “Technology!” what would they think of next? I knew that there was some genius somewhere thinking of the whole thing and then setting up factories, like the one I worked at, to make and distribute them.

In all the time I worked there this genius never showed up to watch over my shoulder to see if I got it right. There wasn’t even a telephone call to see if everything was going okay nor did he put a stamp of approval on each set as it went out the door. He didn’t go home with each set to take care of it or personally give the buyer instructions on how to make it work best. He merely birthed an idea and left it to others to carry his idea to completion.

Unlike the “creator” of this gadget from the 60’s, God, our creator, watched and participated, in our lives from conception. Even in His “genius” of creating a human being, he did not just set up factories to make each of us but he knew each of us intimately from our conception until we were fully formed in our mother’s womb. He didn’t just send us out with a five page instruction manual but has never left us and even at this moment knows how many hairs are on our heads.

Psalm 139 tells of the intimacy with which God the Father cares for His creation (us). David the psalmist says “O Lord, You have searched me and know me”. According to the psalmist, He knows my thoughts, He even knows when I sit down or rise up. Amazingly, it doesn’t matter where we go He is with us. David even has to say “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me: It is too high. I cannot understand it”. One commentary says “poetic language is used to express the unfathomable, that God sovereignly crafts us according to His will”. Brilliant, isn’t it!

As I was privileged, again, to watch another grandchild born, I couldn’t help but wonder what this little baby was crafted to be. How wonderful that the sovereign God who created her will go with her all the days of her life. Where can she go, that God would not go with her? The unfathomable truth is nowhere! I have to say with David such knowledge is too wonderful and too high for me!

What holds true for this baby girl goes for each of us no matter our age!

 O LORD, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.

Psalm 139 1-3