I just finished Jen Wilkin’s latest book, None Like Him: 10 Ways God is Different From Us (and why that’s a good thing). It is a short read but packed with truth. Here’s an excerpt from the book about Psalm 139 – I’d never read it this way.

“Without question, the subject of Psalm 139 is not us. It is God.

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.

He searches, knows, discerns — omniscient.

He is behind and before –eternal.

He is beyond human reckoning — incomprehensible. 

Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee form your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost pasts of the sea, even there you hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,’ even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.

He is near and far, high and low — omnipresent.

His right hand sustains — self-sufficient.

For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. 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 forms for me, when as yet there was none of them.

He creates life — self-existent.

He does wondrous works — omnipotent.

He ordains each day — sovereign.

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. I awake, and I am still with you.

He is immeasurable — infinite.

He endures — immutable.

Omniscient, eternal, incomprehensible, omnipresent, self-sufficient, self-existent, omnipotent, sovereign, infinite, immutable. No, Psalm 139 is not a psalm about me, fearfully and wonderfully made. It is a psalm about my Maker, fearful and wonderful.

It is a psalm intended to inspire awe.”

Let us love and sing and wonder…