Psalm 139:13, Knit Together In My Mother’s Womb

//Today’s verse is a beautiful bit of poetry, but it’s also a caution against reading all of the Bible literally. Of course we are not literally “knit together” by God in the womb, for to believe this would mean believing that God sometimes makes mistakes. Our progeny are not always perfect. We see children born with congenital defects, such as Down’s syndrome or cystic fibrosis. Most of these defects, we know, are caused by mistakes in the replication process of genes during reproduction, or by faulty genes that are inherited from one or both parents. Life is miraculous, but not supernatural…indeed, life is quite natural, succumbing to the same rules of replication and distortion that produced us through billions of years of evolution in the first place.

The psalmist continues,

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

… words that echo in my own heart. Fearfully and wonderfully made am I, through the awesomeness of evolving life.