Psalm 71:6 From my birth I have relied on you;
you brought me forth from my mother’s womb.
I will ever praise you.

This particular Psalm is anonymous, but there is no question that the writer’s name is known in heaven, because he has shared his faith for the benefit of generations to come. The Japanese and the English have a small difference in nuance that makes the Japanese far more applicable to my experience than the NIV. Where the NIV says “I have relied on you,” the Japanese says, “You have embraced me.” In other words, the focus is not on what I have done but on what God has done. If we were dependent on our own faithfulness, none of us would make it! (2 Timothy 2:13) Several Psalmists and prophets were very aware that God had had His hand on them from birth, or even before. You cannot take the Bible seriously and fail to be in awe of the miracle that is human life. That shows how badly deceived people are who claim to be Christian and yet set some arbitrary point after conception at which a person becomes a human being. The better we realize that it is indeed God who created us in our mothers’ wombs the more we will indeed praise Him.

This particular Psalm hits home for me because I was in church from conception on, with prayers and hymns reaching my ears through the amniotic fluid. Such an environment caused me at age four to announce to my mother that I loved her a lot, but not nearly as much as I loved Jesus. God has indeed embraced me from infancy. However, I haven’t always relied on Him accurately. Too many times I have taken Him for granted, failing to realize that I have to be in line with Him for His blessings to flow through me. If a pipe is disconnected from the source, no water is going to come out the other end! His patience with me has been absolutely amazing. Sometimes I think I have a lot in common with Jacob, who really wasn’t that nice a guy before he became Israel. I am to be grateful for the blessings God has poured out on me and give Him glory for them, but I am never to presume on them, much less think I have earned them. How could I earn the circumstances of my birth? I am to seek to be an effective communicator of God’s plan of salvation to all, remembering that He loves them as much as He loves me, though that is more than I could express in words.

Father, thank You indeed for Your amazing grace. Thank You for how You have embraced and protected me, keeping me from far worse than I ever experienced, even though I deserved far worse than I got. I shudder to think of the roads I could so easily have taken, but You kept me from them. Help me extend Your grace to those around me, some of whom have taken those roads, so that together we may walk with You on Your road, for Your glory. Thank You. Praise God!