139

In the modern church, Psalm 139 is often rightly used as a pro-life passage and often distorted by use only as body image encouragement. "I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made" is not just a means of making girls feel better about what they see in the mirror, but a vision of inherent human worth and dignity. Our soul should know God's marvelous works well, and we should be amazed by His creation, but Scripture never once commands women to think that they are beautiful. The complexity of the human body and its sophisticated processes should amaze us, and we should be awed by legs that run, eyes that see, voices that speak and sing, and the ways that our bodies portray our intangible personalities. So, instead of making jokes about your body, feel reverence and wonder, seeing yourself as a creation of a supernatural being who created a world too complex and amazing for us to understand, yet desires personal relationship with us. 

Marvel over God's creation and the wonders of being human, but don't think that's all this chapter of the Bible has to say. Psalm 139 is ultimately about the inherent worth of human life, God's sovereignty, and His personal involvement with and love for us. God knows all, created all, and will deal with all. In middle school, when I had some anxiety issues, I memorized this chapter to help me cope with any troubling thoughts that came to mind, reciting it to distract my mind and reassure myself of God's provision. I was too astute to console myself with the idea that God would protect me from anything and everything, but I did know that He would be with me. He knew my thoughts, was intimately aware of my every thought and movement, created me, providentially ordained my days, had a purpose for my life, would see me even in the dark, and would deal with evildoers in the end. I trusted God's provision and the promise of final justice, and even though the world still did not seem safe, I knew there was someone omnipotent and wise outside of it.

“My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in secret and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed, and in your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me when as yet there were none of them.”

By making this Bible passage part of everyday life, I laid a foundation for myself which greatly helped me cope with life difficulties a couple years later, when my health problems worsened, I felt completely alone at youth group, and I had no real friends. At that time in my life, I was miserable, and even though I still enjoyed some things in life and never realized that I was depressed, I now recognize how skewed and wrong my emotional life was. Before, I thought that as long as I could still laugh and enjoy life at times, I was fine and just had teenage girl mood swings, but I actually had serious problems. When I felt depressed, one of the things which kept me going was a belief that even when I felt like I could contribute nothing to the world and only created problems for my family, my life was inherently valuable. 

What got me through life was not a belief that my physical body was wonderfully made and that I therefore was beautiful, but that my human life had purpose and meaning because God had written my story before I had any physical form. God intimately crafts us and ordains our every breath. Life is not an accident. There are a number of different influences which kept me stable, but the most significant was the Christian worldview I had developed, because it gave me assurance that life was inherently meaningful and worth living even when it did not make me happy. God has planned out the history of the universe and the history of me, and just because I am infinitesimal on the scale of reality does not mean that I am invisible or a worthless pawn to God. He cares about the details of my life and desires personal relationship. As Psalm 139 makes clear, He knows my thoughts, knows my every movement, and searches my heart. The God who flung stars into space cares about me.

My life is worth living because God deems it so, not because of anything I have or am capable of. When I was depressed and felt that my life was meaningless, no good to anyone, and of no enjoyment to myself, I took comfort in Psalm 139 because the whole psalm made it abundantly clear that God had planned out every moment of my days and that I mattered because He created, knew, and loved me. Even when I felt like I'd much rather die than keep being miserable for the rest of life, I wanted to see out the days that God had crafted before I took my first breath. I knew there was more out there waiting for me, and that even if things didn’t get better, my life still had a purpose to fulfill.

God created me with care and attention, and I could not squander my shot at life just because what he ordained for my young teenage years didn’t accord to my desires. I believed that God knew what He was doing, and that if He is in His wisdom had decreed that I should live, I could not thwart that. If I was alive, that meant I had a purpose, and since I could not see out to the end of my story, I had no authority or power to make any judgment call about whether my life was good. I had no right to choose who lived and died in a story that wasn’t mine, and even when I was bitter and pessimistic about my life, I plugged ahead out of reverence for God.

It was not a belief in my own specialness, but submission to my Creator, that made life seem worthwhile. I accepted that I wasn’t in control and that there was a reason life was not left up to my judgment. I had to trust God and plod ahead in His plan even when I didn’t like it, because I believed that he knew what He was doing and that if I was alive, that meant I had ongoing purpose – whether I could see it or not. I had to submit to God's rule and believe that He, not my plan for my life, would bring ultimate goodness and satisfaction.

This past week, I was thinking about some life situations which I deeply resent. It's all past now, but it still affects my life and the way I see the world, and because my circumstances were abnormal, deeply life-shaping, and set me apart from others, it is hard to accept them. I hate what I had to deal with, and even though I can see ways that my experiences gave me greater compassion for others, empathy, and reliance on God, it still jars as wrong, and I often wish that this had not been part of my life. The resulting spiritual growth, compassion, and empathy all make the suffering seem worthwhile in one sense, but even so, no pragmatic benefit can make up for what I had to experience. It still wasn't right, and I was still miserable, and just because good came out of something does not mean that I have to look back on anguish with a dismissive smile. What I have to do is submit to the sovereign rule of God. 

When I get angry over what happened and make myself miserable wondering what it would be like to have had a normal life, I am rebelling against God’s will and saying that His plan is not enough. My attitude shows that even though I cognitively see worth and growth through the bad experiences and see ways that I needed them, I don’t want to accept them as part of my life and feel like there could have been another, better way to create the same character in me. Now, I see that all this is rebellion. I must rest in the truth that God has written my days and that my life is in His hands, not left up to my own judgment. And I must believe that I am better off because of it.

If I truly believe that God is sovereign, that  means not only that my life is worthwhile, but that each joy, trial, and mundane happenstance I experience is part of God's ultimate plan, and that I owe Him my trust and allegiance even when I do not know what He is doing. Everything I have experienced serves a purpose, because life is not a meaningless shout into the void. I am an image-bearer of almighty God, and I have inherent dignity and worth because of that. My experiences, both good and bad, are part of an intentional design created by someone much wiser than I, and instead of rebelling against the small picture because it does not suit my desires, I must submit to an almighty God who spoke galaxies into existence, ordained human history, yet cares about my every thought.