This is part 4 of a 6-part series. View the entire series here.
How precious are Your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered! I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand! And when I wake up, You are still with me! – Psalm 139:17-18 NLT
This made me think of you.
When accompanied by a gift, a silly video from social media, or even a quote from a book, these may be the six most loving words you could possibly say to someone.
My sister is the person I’ve spent the most time with in the entire world, so she knows pretty much everything there is to know about me. We grew up together, we shared a bedroom for 22 years, and we now live together as adults. Her top love language is gift giving, which means no less than once a week, she’ll come home with a random item she found at the store that has some kind of sentimental significance to me. She’s great at giving birthday and Christmas presents too, but these little surprise gifts always mean so much more, because they’re not for any particular occasion. They’re not given out of calendrical obligation. They’re just because. She saw something in the store, it made her think of me, and she wanted me to have it as a reminder that I take up space—not only in her life, but in her mind and her heart, too.
We all want to be thought of. We all want reassurance that we matter to those around us, that we exist in a tangible sense, that we’re more than background characters in other people’s lives. Like when a friend gets you a coffee and remembers, without having to be reminded, that you take it with oatmilk. Or when your neighbor gives your daughter a book for her birthday and it’s on a subject matter she loves. These small acts of noticing may not seem like much, but to the person who’s being noticed, they mean everything.
“How precious are Your thoughts about me…I can’t even count them.” My first instinct when I read these words is to ask why. It’s one thing to be thought of by friends, families, coworkers, or neighbors. That’s pretty easy for us to wrap our heads around. But being thought of by God Himself? An entirely different thing. Why would God think about me?
David asks the same question in Psalm 8: “When I look at the night sky and see the work of Your fingers—the moon and the stars You set in place—what are mere mortals that You should think about them, human beings that You should care for them?” (8:3-4 NLT). That God would think about human beings didn’t really make sense to the writers of Scripture, and it doesn’t really make sense to us now, either. God is eternal, self-sufficient, lacking in nothing. He doesn’t create out of need or loneliness. So the only explanation for why He would think about us is because He loves us, and He wants to think about us. And not just an initial thought at our conception or birth—all the time. There’s never a moment when God isn’t thinking about you. Even when your mind isn’t on Him, even when you’re distracted by the thousand and one things that compete for your attention day after day, His mind is on you.
As Charles Spurgeon puts it, God’s thoughts are of “our pardon, renewal, upholding, supplying, educating, perfecting, and a thousand more kinds...” These thoughts, Spurgeon says, “are natural to the Creator, the Preserver, the Redeemer, the Father, the Friend…evermore flowing from the heart of the Lord.”
Sit for a moment in the truth of that. God’s not mad at you, He’s not impatient with you. He doesn’t condemn you for things you’ve done in the past, or for struggles you think you should’ve gotten over by now. The Creator of the universe, the One who put the stars in the sky, who holds all things together, looks at you and deems you worthy of innumerable precious thoughts.
“What is the price of two sparrows—one copper coin? But not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it. And the very hairs on your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are more valuable to God than a whole flock of sparrows.” – Matthew 10:29-31 NLT
