Every One of Your Days is Given and Designed by God

Early in 2024, little Margaret Louise added her voice, her turned-up nose, and her indescribable cuteness to the Morin family. Our sixth grandchild, fourth granddaughter, and sixteenth member of our immediate family, she is already a tiny and unique human. Because she is so very young, much of who she is and who she will become is still mysterious to us.

But not to God!
Every single one of us could repeat this psalm from David’s heart because we are deeply and intimately known by God, and this is true of little Margaret:

"For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.” (Psalm 139:13-16)

Our Bodies and Our Days

We like to point to these verses as reassurance of God’s unique design. I have even said to children, “If you are a little girl with brown hair and freckles, it’s because God intended for you to be a little girl with brown hair and freckles.” (Controversial, right?)

However, verse 16 introduces an area of God’s design that we’re less likely to pay attention to. Our sacred text assures you and me that our days have been “formed” for us “when as yet there was none of them.”

When you are stuck in traffic;
When something goes terribly wrong at work;
When you are behind schedule on everything;
When you have overslept;
When the boring person in your church or your family has trapped you in an endless recitation of their latest medical procedure.

And also…
When the snow is falling like feathers outside your window and your coffee tastes just right;
When the doctor announces a clean bill of health;
When an old friend calls and asks all the right questions;
When a new book arrives in the mail, all crisp and book-smelling;
When your morning walk takes you out into the crisp, early air and suddenly there’s the sun, warming you through and through.

At all these times, we are living the days that have been formed for us ahead of time.
Our days are a gift, designed and given by God.

Little Margaret Morin has already begun to live her way into her given life.
I have been given sixty-two years’ worth of days, some of them better than others, but all of them formed, planned, ordained, given by a wise and loving God who sovereignly controls the universe.

Does thinking of your days as being “formed” for you by God change the way you think about time? The way you think about your span of life?