This is part 3 of a 6-part series. View the entire series here.
You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank You for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in Your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. – Psalm 139:13-16 NLT
Just the other day, a friend of mine sent me a sonogram photo from her most recent ultrasound. In the photo I could see the unmistakable shape of her son’s hand, all its tiny little bones already formed, one finger pointed like he knew he was having his picture taken and wanted to strike a pose for his parents.
My friend is currently 20 weeks pregnant, which means her son is still only about the size of a sweet potato—and yet God’s perfect design for creating life is well underway. Bones are being formed, fingernails and toenails are growing, hearing is developing.
God is knitting him together, moment by moment.
How quickly the miraculous can become common to us. Hundreds of thousands of babies are born worldwide every day. With numbers like those, it’s easy to view pregnancy, birth, and new life as just regular daily occurrences. It’s easy to view ourselves as a regular occurrence, nothing special, just one unremarkable person out of eight billion. Maybe you even grew up hearing over and over from your parents that you were a “surprise” or an “accident”—which you then internalized as I wasn’t wanted.
That your life is no more than random happenstance is a very painful thing to believe about yourself. It informs how you move through the world, how you relate to other people. It has an effect on every part of your life.
But let this sink in: God knew about you. He knew every day of your life from before time began, and His eyes have never left you. Whether or not your parents planned to have you, or desired to have you, you were made intentionally. With care. Because God wanted you.
There are a few verses in John chapter 1 that detail the call of the disciple Nathanael. Nathanael was invited by his friend Philip to “come and see” Jesus, “the very Person Moses and the prophets wrote about” (John 1:45 NLT). Nathanael openly doubts that the Redeemer of Israel could possibly come from somewhere like Nazareth.
But he goes anyway, despite his reservations. When Jesus sees Nathanael coming, He says, “‘Now here is a genuine son of Israel—a man of complete integrity’” (John 1:47 NLT).
Understandably, Nathanael immediately asks how this Man, who he’s never met before, could know him. And not just know his name, either, but deeply enough to assert that he’s a man of integrity.
I love what Jesus says next. “I could see you under the fig tree before Philip found you” (John 1:48 NLT).
I could see you.
And He says the same to you. Before you knew Me, I knew everything about you. Before you could do a single thing for me, I had already made the ultimate sacrifice for you. Before you saw me, I saw you.
This truth isn’t meant to give us a higher view of ourselves than we ought to have. We are still fickle, selfish, prone to wander, prone to choose our own way. We desperately need Jesus, every single day. But this reminder—that we’re made wonderfully complex, that we’re seen and known and tenderly loved by God—is meant to reassure us that we have purpose, and that we’re never alone or unwanted, despite what we may feel.
