Tonight's devotional reading followed on from the theme of us as God's perfect creation matter marred by the invasion or disease of sin by asking us to consider how wonderfully we have been made and how much God really loves us. As I read the notes, I immediately recalled one of my favourite psalms and, sure enough, part of it was the reading they included at the end.

This psalm, 139, has been a favourite for a long time. I read it at my grandmother's funeral, though she was not religious in any way and, more recently, someone read it to me as a reminder of God's love for me no matter who or what I might be. It is powerful stuff.

Tonight, I merely suggest you read it slowly and considerately. Try breathing in on one line and out on another. Calming, deep breaths from your belly work best. In the formal Church of England psalmody, one pauses for a short while between the two halves of a verse and I find that that sometimes encourages slower, more reflective reading. If you're inclined to do so, read it prayerfully as something you are actually saying to God.

When you're finished, ask yourself, what would/does it mean to be loved this much? Ponder that a while in silence.

Psalm 138:1-18 Wrote:The Inescapable God
To the leader. Of David. A Psalm.
1 O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
3 You search out my path and my lying down,
and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue,
O Lord, you know it completely.
5 You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is so high that I cannot attain it.

7 Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
9 If I take the wings of the morning
and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
10 even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me fast.
11 If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light around me become night’,
12 even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day,
for darkness is as light to you.

13 For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
all the days that were formed for me,
when none of them as yet existed.
17 How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18 I try to count them—they are more than the sand;
I come to the end[a]—I am still with you.