Friday 1st December
“How precious to me are your thoughts, God!
How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand –
when I awake, I am still with you.” (Psalm 139 17:18) (NIVUK)
How long do you think it would take to count to a million? Three or four days perhaps?
As a fund-raising challenge, an American man named Jeremy Harper found that it took 89 days (about 3 months) to count to a million! He counted for about 16 hours a day, taking breaks to eat and sleep, and live streamed the whole process.
Apparently, there are about 2 million grains of sand in a cup. Well, if Jeremy had been counting sand grains that would have been around half a cup! I’ll leave you ponder, how many cups of sand there would be on this earth, not just on beaches, but in sea beds, in desserts, and riverbeds too! Even just a child’s sandcastle would be a mind-boggling number of grains! Translate this concept into the number of God’s thoughts toward us, ‘they would outnumber the sand’, and words like vast, infinite, limitless, incalculable, unimaginable, and innumerable, don’t really come close to describing the imagery used here.
David not only ponders the quantity of God’s thoughts toward us, but he also considers their quality. His thoughts are not just immeasurable, but they are precious and weighty – they are not fleeting but substantial and full of meaning.
“David is not alarmed at the fact that God knows all about him; on the contrary, he is comforted, and even feels himself to be enriched, as with a casket of precious jewels. That God should think upon him is the believer’s treasure and pleasure.” (Spurgeon)
Karen Barklay
