Psalms / chapter 100 (read the chapter)
This has always been of my most favorite psalms. I think I used to hear it on a recording as the introduction to a song when I was a child. In my mind, I can still hear a conglomeration of different children’s voices reciting the verses of this psalm. It is succinct and simple. It’s my kind of psalm.
On this trip through the Bible, the verse that stuck out to me was verse 3: “Know that the LORD is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.” Other versions bring out the aspect of this verse that God is the Creator and we are not (in other words, we didn’t make ourselves). But, because He made us, we belong to Him.
I’m certain the reason I’ve “seen” that verse so clearly this time is because I have a five-month-old daughter. And I know full well that she belongs to me. It is I (and my husband) who made her, and not she herself. No matter where she goes in life, no matter what she does, no matter who she becomes, she will always have her origins in the love story of David and Kelley Lorencin. Always.
She will never be able to escape the fact that she came from us. She might pretend it’s not so. She might refuse to think about it or talk about it. She might disown us as her parents. But none of that would change the fact that one of the two cells which began her existence came from me, and one came from David, and she grew inside my body. Though she will one day “wake up on the planet” (as far as her level of consciousness is concerned), she didn’t just appear here out of nowhere. David and I know her right now, even before she “knows herself.”
And so, I read this text somewhat bemused because, in the world where I live, there are a great number of people who would like to disown their heavenly Father. There are a great number of people who would like to pretend that they did not come from a Creator but, rather, from a cosmic accident. There are a great number of people who would like to believe they mutated from pond scum or monkeys.
But none of that can change the fact that the Creator made them, and they belong to Him. They didn’t just appear out of nowhere. Before they “woke up on the planet,” they were known by God just as surely as I know my daughter.
We are all beloved children of our heavenly Father. He made us, and we belong to Him. In His eyes, each one of us is infinitely precious. Each one of us has inestimable worth. We didn’t make ourselves, and we don’t live only unto ourselves. God made us, and no matter where we go in life, no matter what we do, no matter who we become, we will always have our origins in the love story of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.
Always.
