April 22, 2024

Psalm  56.8 (NIV)
Record my lament; list my tears on your scroll – are they not in your record?

Humanity is not a faceless crowd to God.*

In college, we had to do a “project” during our study of the book of Exodus. I don’t recall if the whole class did the same thing or if we had choices but I remember that I made a poster depicting the specifications for the tabernacle. I miscalculated on my drawing of the curtain and got the dimensions wrong. (If I had been a mathematician, I would not have gone to Bible college.) As I had put off starting the project until after curfew on the night before it was due, and I had no more posterboard, I was stuck with my mistake. I’m sure the professor was impressed with how I improved on God’s design by labeling the excess inches as “extra fabric.”

 

While the experience should have taught me a lesson about procrastination, what I did take away from it was an awe of God’s attention to detail. He didn’t give vague instructions about the number of rooms and how big to make them; he designed the whole décor of the place, right down to the color-scheme, the finishing touches, and the priests’ garments. I don’t know if Professor Black intended it, but I got better acquainted with my God that semester. I began to understand that if God cared that much about the interior decorating of his house, how much he must care about the details of my life.

My tears? Of course he cares about them. I like the idea that my tears are important enough for God to keep a record of them. But how many tears have I shed over silly things? I would rather he didn’t keep a record of those tears, but how sweet it is to know that he cared about something that seemed worthy of crying over at the time. Never would God make me feel stupid for being – well, stupid. He might lead me to the realization that I am being foolish but never would he make me feel that I am a fool.

In Matthew 10.30, Jesus says that our Father knows how many hairs are on our heads. Is that important information? It is to him. If our tears and our hairs are important to him - the creator of the universe and the God of details - how much more he cares about the big picture: our eternal salvation.

In the light of the sovereign God and this sacrificial Christ, we weep at our own pettiness. How can we have been thinking about anything else?*