“You have multiplied, O Lord my God,
your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us;
none can compare with you!
I will proclaim and tell of them,
yet they are more than can be told.” Psalm 40:5
“O Lord, you have searched me and known me!
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.
You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it…
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.
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
If I would count them, they are more than the sand.” Psalm 139:1-6,15-18
It boggles the mind to consider God’s thoughts toward us. He knows me inside out, is acquainted with all of my ways, is concerned for my every concern, and is always interceding for me. And He is and does this for every one of His children. Without getting confused. With no exhaustion. With perfect clarity and measure, grace and understanding. Who can know the mind of the Lord? (Romans 8:34; 11:33-34)
Our response to the Lord’s multiplied thoughts toward us should be many and high and precious thoughts back toward Him. How marvelous His deeds and love, that He would be mindful toward us! How vast are His ways, and His paths planned for us and His world are beyond tracing out! He is the high and holy One, yet He esteems and cares for us, and has crowned us with glory and honor. (1 Kings 8:27; Psalm 8:3-5; Isaiah 57:15; Jeremiah 23:24)
What will we do to foster and maintain a high view of God? How will we remain regular in humble, glad worship? These practices take deliberation, time, and effort. Our world will do all it can to diminish God’s grandeur, to lower our estimation of Him, or to banish Him from consideration altogether. We face a constant barrage of me-first and look-here-and-down-and-right-and-left, but seldom up. So we must pause. We must put away screens and devices. We must open His living Word. We must train ourselves to take delight in Him as He does us, to multiply our thoughts toward and about Him.
Indeed, as we regularly fill our minds with this infinite One who holds innumerable thoughts of us, we’ll find ourselves more apt to ponder His graces and beauties, more awe-struck at His ways, more thankful, more inspired to lofty thinking and to elevate discussions with others. Our hearts will swell with Christ’s love and pulse with His compassion. We will grow more expectant for eternal, big things, and less irritable and nit-picky over temporal, small things. Is this our desire?
Father, multiply my thoughts toward You, and adoration and praise. May I, in my finiteness, match your infiniteness with wholehearted wonder, devotion, and surrender.
As the rain and snow 