Your hands made me and formed me. Psalm 119:73
As I meditated on this verse the other day, I recalled other verses that talk about God’s intimate knowledge of us. For example, God tells Jeremiah that he knew him even before He formed him in the womb (Jeremiah 1:5). Psalm 139:13 acknowledges that God “formed my inward parts and wove me together in my mother’s womb.”
This particular morning, as I thought about God’s hands making me and forming me, I wondered if it was merely poetic license. After all, God is spirit so does he really have hands? The Bible describes God sheltering us under his wing, so does that mean He has wings?
The idea of God forming me brought to mind the Genesis account of God forming man from the dust of the earth. As soon as I got home, I looked up Genesis 2:7. Without mentioning hands, it says God formed man of dust from the ground. The Hebrew word for “formed” is also used for a potter who fashions a jar or a pot from a lump of clay. The potter’s hands are intimately involved in shaping and forming the clay.
Contrast that with the rest of the creation account. According to Genesis 1, everything else was spoken into existence by God. “Let there be…” And there was light. And there were heavens. Earth. Plants. Sun, moon and stars. Fish and birds. Land animals.
And then God made man. He took some dust from the ground and, in the same way a potter forms the clay, He made a man. God could have spoken man into being just like everything else. But God chose to form man with his spirit hands. It wasn’t enough just to speak; He chose the intimacy of touch in creating man. Adam, the psalmist, you and me. From the very beginning, God wanted a close, intimate relationship with us.
Doesn’t that just make your day?!
