Your Days are Numbered
These words sound menacing, and typically when spoken outside of a Biblical context, they are intended as such. But Biblically speaking, the idea that the very number of our days is pre-ordained speaks to the sovereignty and attentiveness of God. Nothing happens to us or through us that escapes His notice, and that is the essence of Psalm 139. He is omniscient, omnipresent, and a new term learned this morning… omnificent, which means “unlimited in creative power.” There is no one who sees us, knows us or loves us more thoroughly than God.
Knowing that I would be writing the devotion for Psalm 139, I assumed I would be focusing on the “fearfully and wonderfully made” section. It’s pretty famous after all, and there’s a lot of meat there. But as I listened to Steve Robertson read verses 13-18, it was verse 16 that burned in my heart.
“…all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”
Having tragically lost his 27-year-old son just two months ago, his reading of those words was particularly poignant. When a good person dies young and so seemingly senselessly, it is always tempting to question the omnipresence of God. Where was He?? Why didn’t He intervene?? But if we truly believe the earlier verses of the psalm which speak to His omnipresence, we can conclude something much different.
“Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there. If I make bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.”
God was there. He was with John Robertson at the moment of his death just as he had been all the days of his life. There is no place and no time in which He is not present. The meaning of the prefix “omni” is simply “all”. He is all-present, all the time. As John lived what only God knew to be his final day, Psalm 139 was in effect. God was there.
“You know when I sit and when I rise;” “You hem me in behind and before, and You lay Your hand upon me;” “Your right hand will hold me fast.”
On the other side of eternity, we will see God’s perfect care over our lives, to the detail of the exact number of our days. 1 Corinthians 13:12 says that “Now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; but then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”
No one knows us more completely and therefore no one can be better trusted with the course of our lives and the numbering of our days, than our Heavenly Father. For John and for all of us, our days are numbered and are in His hands.
~ Melissa Gibbs has been a member of LIFE Fellowship for over 10 years, is the mother to four boys and widow of the late JD Gibbs. She also is a founding board member of Ambassador Christian School.