All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. (Psalm 139:16)

As of my birthday this year, I had lived 14,975 days. That's about half the number of days the average American can expect to live. We normally measure our age by the number of years we have lived, but maybe David was onto something when he wrote the words of this psalm verse and described his life in terms of days.

We generally take for granted each day that the sun will come up, we will go about our routine and then go to bed that night. Unless we have something exciting planned, we don't expect one day to be much different from the next. But life has a way of changing our plans all too unexpectedly, doesn't it? We don't start off a day expecting to have a car accident, to lose a job, to hear an ominous diagnosis from the doctor or to go to the hospital. When you stop to think of it that way, isn't it foolish of us to assume that one day will be like the next as if we can control what happens? The book of James even tells us: "Now listen, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.' Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow...Instead, you ought to say, 'If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.' As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil" (James 4:14-16). It is the height of sinful human arrogance for us to live our lives as if we can count on what will happen on any given day.

But through David, the LORD invites us to look at our days God's way. David had some tough days. One day he had to fight the giant, Goliath. For many days he hid in caves, running from King Saul who wanted to kill him. And those were just some of the bad days David had. David even knew how miserable sin and guilt can make each day when for about a year he refused to confess his sin of committing adultery with Bathsheba and murdering her husband. Yet we don't find David complaining about how lousy those days were. Instead he calmly acknowledges to the LORD, "All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." Even before the day when David was conceived or the day he came from his mother's womb, David was on the LORD's schedule. The LORD knew everything that would happen on every day of David's life. And as we read Bible history and see David's life unfold, we see the LORD working on those days in such a way that in both good and bad times he guided David like a shepherd to bring him to heaven.

The same Good Shepherd knows every one of our days too even before we do--even before those days come to be. Even before the sun rises he knows the joys and sorrows that will fill those days. Perhaps today will be your last day on earth. Perhaps today you'll get tragic news. Those things might surprise us, but they won't surprise the God before whom all of our days are crystal clear. Remember, the LORD is our God who made this universe from nothing in six days and who raised our Savior from death on the third day. He is the gracious, forgiving God who has appointed a final day on which he will judge the world and take his believers to heaven. Though we are less powerful to control the events of our days than we think, the things that happen on any given day are not beyond the control of our almighty, all-knowing God. No matter how many days on earth he gives you, he has them already recorded in his book and he will use those days to guide you with his word to the endless day of heaven.

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am 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. (Psalm 139:13-15)

If you see a stunt often enough, it no longer looks too special or out of the ordinary. If we saw a miracle every day, we'd get used to it and it wouldn't look very remarkable either. No wonder that David wrote the verses of our text to remind us of the miracle that we see every time we look into the mirror.

Every human being is a miracle, for we didn't just pop into existence on our own or by the chance process of evolution. We are nothing less than the carefully and deliberately planned creations of God. God created our first parents, Adam and Eve, when he was finishing his creation on the sixth day. Each of us has descended from Adam and Eve through the natural reproductive process, but nevertheless each of us is nothing short of a miracle in which God had a hand.

"You created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb," David says. None of us are here just because our parents chose to have children. God is responsible for shaping and forming us in the womb. There may be unwanted children and unplanned pregnancies--but not to God! He is the one who gets the credit for fertilizing an egg cell and causing that cell to multiply and grow into a complete human being. Though you may feel like you don't belong and may struggle for identity in this world, the fact is that God put you together, knitting you together much as a grandmother carefully and lovingly knits a woolen sweater. Regardless of the circumstances of your birth, you are no accident! God was responsible for putting you together, so you can rest assured that you do have a reason for being here.

And God put you together with amazing forethought. David had to confess that he was fearfully and wonderfully made. Because we live with the wonders of our bodies every day, we so often fail to appreciate these marvels of God's creation until something malfunctions. But stop to think about some of the systems and functions God has given you: A heart that beats without you even thinking about it as it pumps life-sustaining blood through your circulatory system--a system which could stretch around the earth twice if its parts were joined end-to-end. Eyes that blink an average of 13 times per minute and automatically adjust to let in the right amount of light for you to see. (The eye is such a wondrous creation that it stumped even Darwin.) Arms and legs that move in just about any direction. How can anyone who has studied medicine fail to notice the wisdom and power of a Creator in the wonders of the human body?

Even sin has not totally tarnished the beauty of this creation of God. Though we suffer illness, organ failure and death, we still remain the crowning achievement of God's creation. We are, after all, the only living creatures whom God took the time to form from the dust of the ground and breathe life into. More than that, we are the only creatures with a soul, designed to have a loving and perfect relationship with God as our heavenly Father. And to fix that relationship once sin had broken it, God sent his Son into the world as a human being also created in the womb of his virgin mother. Though he lives in a body totally unaffected by sin, Jesus Christ felt in his flesh the pain and suffering that our sins earned us. He went through the most traumatic bodily experience of all--death--in order to give us the blessed eternal joy of heaven. But this holy Savior suffered death on a cross and rose to life again to take our sins away and to restore the broken relationship with our Maker.

We are amazing creatures--not just because we are created in our Maker's image but also because as God's baptized people we are clothed in our Redeemer's righteousness. The next time you look into the mirror, take a moment to notice God's handiwork, and join David in praising the LORD who has fearfully and wonderfully made you.