I love reading 19th-century novels like those by Dickens, Melville, Hugo, Dostoyevsky, and many others. A favorite novella is ‘Silas Marner’ by the English female author George Eliot. I’ve read it numerous times. With more to come, hopefully. It’s a moving story about a man, Master Marner, who becomes transformed from a greedy miser into a loving father of a small child who stumbles into his candle-lit cabin as her mother tragically dies, lying in a nearby snow bank. How does he earn his fortune? By weaving and then burying his earned gold coins under the rustic cabin’s floorboards.

Silas Marner is a weaver. The book’s subtitle is ‘The Weaver of Raveloe’. In those times, weavers often travelled, working from home to home in addition to laboring in their own cottages. My wife weaves. She has a loom. The shuttlecock flies by as she intertwines yarns of varied colors and blends. Some threads contain silk, cashmere, bamboo, and wool. It’s fascinating watching my wife at work. And from this ancient process, the most amazing creations emerge and bless our home.

When I read Psalm 139, I think of Master Marner and my wife, busy at work creating what’s beautiful and needed. Here’s what the psalmist writes–‘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’ (Ps. 139: 13-14).

King David, our psalmist today, praises the Master Weaver and Knitter, his God. The One who creates everything out of nothing, merely by uttering a word. He says it, it happens. Plain and simple, though its complexity confounds the sharpest human minds, though sadly it is rarely admitted. I think of our being made of DNA and RNA, their double- and single-helices wound and woven together, which make up the human body. Who can comprehend all of that? Certainly not me. You too?

The Hebrew language in verse 14 reads literally–‘…for I am fearfully wonderful…’ Now don’t get a swelled head. Yes, you may be ‘Mr. Wonderful’, but who created you? A self-made man? All by pulling up your own bootstraps? Think again.

‘Fearfully wonderful’ with awe and respect, love and admiration go deservedly to our Creator God and to Him alone. Or is it a matter of chance and chaos? Natural selection with genetic variation? Evolved that way? Hardly. Au contraire. We’ve been created, each of us, by a Master Craftsman. The One and Only. This is our God.

So remember. And don’t forget! To praise the One who knows what He’s doing. What He’s done and what’s to come. All history is His story. Pause and give the Lord praise for all His fearfully wonderful creation. As in you and me, too!

We praise you, our Lord, for being our Master Creator and Craftsman, who also loves us very much. In Jesus’ name. Amen.