Lisa Harper · July 5, 2026 · 51m
- worth
- identity
- grace
from “Psalm 139”
And this is how David starts this song. You have searched me, oh Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise, you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down. You are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, you, oh Lord, know it completely. You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It blows my hard drive. It is too lofty for me to attain. 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 my 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. If I say surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me, even the darkness will not be dark to you. The night will shine like the day for darkness is as light to you. Listen to this. For you created my inmost being. You knit me together in my mama's womb. I praise you because I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful. I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. In other words, our worth precedes any accomplishment or merit on our behalf. Long before your daddy had a wink in his eye, our creator redeemer predetermined that he would subscribe priceless value to you. There's nothing we earn. We just sang that. But I think for most of us, we can sing it. We can say it, but to grasp in a world that says you're only as valuable as your last performance in a world where we are entirely judged by how we perform and how much we produce. It is really hard for us to wrap our dinky human Ryan minds around the concept that this perfect, Holy Trinitarian God ascribed invaluable worth to us before anybody would have said we were worth anything. We hadn't done anything yet to be considered worthy. And yet David makes it clear before any of us breathed our first breath, our heavenly father said, worth. I'm ascribing worth to you flip forward to the book of Isaiah. I love Isaiah's prophecy and Isaiah underscores this idea of predetermined worth and priceless value that God ascribes to us, Isaiah 43.
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