The Days Ordained

Psalm 139:16

Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me when as yet there was none of them.

“God made you special, and he loves you very much.” -Larry the Cucumber and Bob the Tomato

To come to scripture is to come not to words on a page or even to thoughts written long ago, but rather it is to come in contact with a living thing. Scripture is living and active. As Christians read it, it changes them cutting away the refuse of our sinful nature. It sustains our feeble sense and provides us with another, deeper look at our Lord. To open the text is to invite God in. This is nowhere more apparent than when the reader comes to a verse “they know” and the Spirit of God enters into the reader and helps them understand it so as to bring comfort into the reckless and seemingly chaotic circumstances of life.

Psalm 139 is a verse many Christians have loved throughout the millennia of the church. It has brought comfort and wisdom in dark days. It has given Solders and Martyrs hope knowing that they will not die unknown before God. That he is always looking out for them. It has given Politicians and voters wisdom that life does not begin at birth or at the point the child is desired, but rather when God has begun the work of knitting a child together.

Like many others this last week the dark days around us have begun to weigh on me. Looking around at a great nation being torn apart. Where worshippers have to decide if they will need armed guards in the pews and if Churches should remain unlocked during the hours that the congregation would gather together. These are not questions knew to Christians. Christians have had to gather in fear from the very beginning, notice Peter had to knock at a locked door after he escaped prison, and Jesus had to go through a looked door to eat with his disciples, yet they are new decisions for Christian Churches in the United States, our time of oddity is coming to an end, we are going to have to join the rest of Christian history, leaning on the providence and provision of God in dark times when we don’t know the hardships that await us or our children.

There was a time that the greatest challenge we thought we would have to face is declining numbers. Watching as the communities we love reject the God we adore and abandon the assembly of the righteous. Yet this is not our lot, instead we were given the task of shepherding the Church through not an ambivalent culture but rather a hostile one.  Yet these are not simply the times we live in. These are the days “formed for” us. Just as Bob an Larry tell kids that God made them special, so too has he made the days they are to live in. So too has he made the days we are to live in. Not only did he “form our inward parts” he also made these times for us that we might show his glory. He not only made us special he made the days specifically for us to fit in and bring glory to him in.  You see this wisdom play out in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien as the wise Gandalf is imparting wisdom to the young Frodo.

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

CRUCE, DUM SPIRO, FIDO