Day 5

“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.”  —PSALM 139:15-16

Some of us may think that we were a mistake! Our parents might have believed we were a mistake!  We might feel like a mistake, we might even look like a mistake. But nobody is a mistake! 

The day we were born God didn’t look down from heaven and say, “Where did that one come from?”  When we were born we were no surprise. He had known us even before we were conceived in our mother’s womb, let alone before our birth. And because we were known before we existed, our lives have meaning and significance. We are not a random collection of genes, chromosomes and DNA that tumbled together to make you, you, and me, me. Apart from our physical being, we are spiritual beings whose significance both predates and out lives our physical existence. 

This does not mean that we are pawns on God’s chessboard, designed to implement His plans; for we are first and foremost, the objects of His love. The purposes He has for our lives are an expression of His love for us.

Sometimes we may not feel loved; sometimes we may feel distant, detached and dejected, but Romans 5:5 reminds us that, “God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom He has given us.”  To know He loves us is not just a fact we need to accept (though we do), but something to which the Holy Spirit bears witness by His presence and activity in our lives.  It is important to know we are loved because God tells us, but we also need to seek and ask for that ‘pouring out of His love’, which reassures us deeply that we belong to Him. To say our lives have purpose is not only to see our lives as a means to a good end, but that we ourselves are the end purpose! And that God loves us, because He loves us!  That is reason enough. 

PRAYER: Thank You, Lord, that all the days ordained for us were written in your book; and for the purpose and meaning that gives to our lives. We want to be those who trust you because you love us, and love out of the security of that love.