O Lord, you have searched me and known me. … It was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
– Psalm 139:1, 13-14a (NRSV)
We are formed and reformed continuously, shaped by countless factors:
The circumstances into which we are born and the circumstances we strive to control as our life course. The bodies our souls inhabit and the changing health of our bodies. The people who raise us, the friends who sway us. The food we eat, the air we breathe. The tasks we undertake, the awe we cultivate. Every day, our inward parts are formed and reformed—physically, spiritually, psychologically.
My inward being today is not what my inward being will be tomorrow. As intimately as I might know another person today (or as intensively as I’ve judged another person today), tomorrow they will be formed anew. They will have new cells, new information, new influences, new relationships. Their inward being will have gained and shed and found and lost.
That anyone would claim to know us, or that we might claim to know our own selves, is both wonderful and arrogant. Subsequently, it’s a miracle to forge bonds with people who know us well and who enjoy knowing our formed and reformed selves each day. It’s a gift to know ourselves anew each day, whether on our own or with someone like a therapist or through healthy relationships that help us know ourselves better, that encourage us to love ourselves more fully. It’s a blessing, too, to remember that those who are content in knowing only our faults are ill-informed as soon as tomorrow dawns.
Who can know us completely—or even a little?
There is One who knows our inward being as it was before we encountered a world of influences. There is One who is present with us in the very nanosecond of our cells forming, of our wisdom reforming, of our selves renewing. There is One who knows all that is wonderful, all that is fearful, and all that is love within us—in the very moment of creation.
Prayer: For the ways you know me, O Creator, as I am now and as I will be tomorrow—thank you.
cross-posted with the Daily Devotional