Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Sunday, July 18, 2010
God's message for my 22nd birthday: Wait
i believe God is telling me something on my birthday weekend, through the birthday card that Godpa Neale got me as well as through the song i found while surfing on Youtube, "While I'm Waiting" by John Waller.
"Waiting for God's best can be very hard at times.
When it comes to giving us His best, He is simply never in a hurry.
"Waiting for God is not laziness.
Waiting for God is not going to sleep.
Waiting for God is not the abandonment of effort.
Waiting for God means, first, activity under command;
second, readiness for any new command that may come;
third, the ability to do nothing until the command is given."
- G. Campbell Morgan
"Waiting for God's best can be very hard at times.
Remember, His best is the best.
It really is worth waiting for.
About this card design: I can testify to the futility of trying to get God to speed things up in my life.
I finally learned to put my 'wait' on His shoulder when it came to finding a wife, settling in on a career, having a ministry, owning a home.When it comes to giving us His best, He is simply never in a hurry.
There's a wonderful by-product that He gives when we're willing to wait: contentment.
(And His best never comes without it!)"
- Matthew B. Anderson
I'm waiting
I'm waiting on You, Lord
And I am hopeful
I'm waiting on You, Lord
Though it is painful
But patiently, I will wait
I will move ahead, bold and confident
Taking every step in obedience
While I'm waiting
I will serve You
While I'm waiting
I will worship
While I'm waiting
I will not faint
I'll be running the race
Even while I wait
I'm waiting
I'm waiting on You, Lord
And I am peaceful
I'm waiting on You, Lord
Though it's not easy
But faithfully, I will wait
Yes, I will wait
I will serve You while I'm waiting
I will worship while I'm waiting
I will serve You while I'm waiting
I will worship while I'm waiting
I will serve you while I'm waiting
I will worship while I'm waiting on You, Lord
"Waiting for God is not laziness.
Waiting for God is not going to sleep.
Waiting for God is not the abandonment of effort.
Waiting for God means, first, activity under command;
second, readiness for any new command that may come;
third, the ability to do nothing until the command is given."
- G. Campbell Morgan
Friday, July 2, 2010
My email exchanges with Creation Ministries International
This is what i said in my email to Creation Ministries International:
A friend of mine said to me this on Facebook: "Creationism is not science. You can look up thousands of scientific journals, there's none about creation science. Creationism is a religious belief, not science. So I guess we're talking about different things here. I'm talking about science, you're talking about Christianity.
Just one caveat, if you start challenging scientific theories with religious teachings, you risk being as ridiculous as Pope Pius when he disagreed with Galileo's heliocentric view. And I'm not 'sure' about evolution. I'm no scientist, so my view doesn't matter. I merely agree with scientists on scientific matters, just like I agree with Mourinho on football or Jon Favreau on speech writing."
Please help me answer his challenges. Thanks.
This is their reply:
Creation at its core is not about scientific claims, but historical ones. While refuting the scientific claims of evolutionists is an important part of what we do, this in and of itself does not disprove evolution, because theoretically there could be some mechanism we haven’t discovered yet. So our rejection of evolution does not have to do with the scientific evidence per se, but our acceptance of the truth of the Bible’s historical account of the creation of the world by God in 6 literal days.
While some areas of the creation/evolution debate are carried out in the scientific arena, like whether or not there is a plausible mechanism that would bring about the conditions required for naturalistic evolution, the most vital questions are in the historical arena, because we’re not debating things that we can test in a lab, but one-time events. As N.T. Wright points out in Surprised by Hope,
“There are, after all, different types of knowing. Science studies the repeatable; history studies the unrepeatable. Caesar only crossed the Rubicon once, and if he'd crossed it again it would have meant something different the second time. There was, and could be, only one first landing on the moon. The fall of the second Jerusalem Temple took place in A.D. 70 and never happened again. Historians don't see this as a problem and are usually not shy about declaring that these events certainly took place, even though we can't repeat them in a laboratory.
“But when people say, "But that can't have happened because we know that that sort of thing doesn't actually happen," they are appealing to a would-be scientific principle of history, namely, the principle of analogy. The problem with analogy is that it never quite gets you far enough. History is full of unlikely things that happened once and once only, with the result that the analogies are often at best partial. In any case, if someone declares that certain kinds of events "don't normally happen" that merely invites the retort, "Who says?" ...
“So how does the historian work when the evidence points toward things that we do not normally expect? …Sooner or later questions of worldview begin to loom in the background, and the question of what kinds of material the historian will allow onstage is inevitably affected by the worldview in which he or she lives.”
We’ve got a lot of articles on the Galileo myth (for instance http://creation.com/galileo-quadricentennial); Galileo didn’t get in trouble for promoting heliocentrism, but for promoting what was then just a pretty good hypothesis as if it already were a proven fact, and his arrogance. In fact, it was the Aristotelian establishment in the universities, not the Church, who was the first to attack him. The Church initially supported him!
Which scientists does he agree with, though? Evolutionist scientists agree that evolution happened, but it’s hard to get them to agree exactly how that happened! And then there are scientists who believe that the evidence in their specialty supports not evolution but some form of Intelligent Design or creationism (although not all of those scientists would agree with biblical creation). CMI employs more scientists than any other Christian organization to the best of my knowledge, and they all believe that the evidence from their specialties fits better with biblical creation than with evolution.
Me:
Here's what my friend replied me:
"Haha, first of all, my sincere respect to you for taking what I thought as a casual discussion seriously.
I suppose you want me to counter their arguments, so here it is:
One of the first things I noticed is that they (CMI) seem to indicate that scientists are not evolutionists. This is very skewed. You can ask, google around or approach jc/univ biology/paleontology teachers/professors, find out how many of them are evolutionists.
Just to give you a perspective, in the scientific community, the theory of evolution is almost as solid as the theory of gravity. As I said, scientific journals are filled with articles about evolution. All scientists are evolutionists, except the cuckoo ones.I wrote a paper about (social) evolution last year, so I read quite a lot of them for my literature review. All the published articles agreed with evolution.
Having said that, it's interesting that they say creation happened like a historical event and, hence, unprovable/irrefutable. This clearly indicates that it is not science as one of the main principles of science is falsifiability. If there is no way that the "theory" can be falsified, it is no science. Example: the theory of gravity is falsified if it is proven that there is no gravity force between two masses. But since there is no such proof to date, we can assume that that theory is valid.
The theory of evolution is the best scientific explanation we have today regarding the variety of species on Earth, at least untill we find a theory that better explains the matter at hand and/or falsifies evolution.
I think I have answered to all of their arguments. Otherwise, please do point them to me. And for you, try think for yourself. Don't always believe what is said/written in a (holy) book or preached by a charming figure. Imagine all possibilities. Is there any slightest chance that you're mistaken about something? Open your mind. Ask questions, accept no simple answers. Life is much more beautiful if you understand its mechanism. (;"
i know i should be rebutting him myself but i lack the necessary adequate knowledge to do so. but one day i pray i God will equip me with the knowledge to enlighten the unreached! for now, pls advise me what i should reply to him. seems like i'm stumped!
Creation Ministries International:
I’ll reply to your friend’s assertions one-by-one.
> One of the first things I noticed is that they (CMI) seem to indicate that scientists are not evolutionists. This is very skewed. You can ask, google around or approach jc/univ biology/paleontology teachers/professors, find out how many of them are evolutionists.
Not all scientists are evolutionists. We don’t dispute that creationists are a minority. But creationist scientists have made important contributions to their individual fields. And heliocentrism and evolutionism were once minority positions, as was relativity; simply constituting a minority doesn’t make a view automatically wrong.ot all scientists are evolutionists. We don’t dispute that creationists are a minority. But creationist scientists have made important contributions to their individual fields. And heliocentrism and evolutionism were once minority positions, as was relativity; simply constituting a minority doesn’t make a view automatically wrong.
> Just to give you a perspective, in the scientific community, the theory of evolution is almost as solid as the theory of gravity. As I said, scientific journals are filled with articles about evolution. All scientists are evolutionists, except the cuckoo ones.
Gravity is testable. You can drop a ball, walk off a cliff, throw a computer out the window to observe the effects of gravity. You can repeat tests over and over in different conditions to see what happens. But you can’t perform the same tests with evolution; you can’t see life coming from non-living chemicals by chance. Indeed, the scientifically testable principle that I learned in biology class is that life comes from life, that is, if you see a living creature, it’s safe to assume that it came from a living creature of the same sort, which itself came from another living creature of the same sort, and so on and so forth. But they make an exception for the first life, which they argue came from non-living goo.
Also, part of the “life comes from life” rule is that the offspring will be the same sort of creature as the mother; rats from rats, bats from bats. But evolutionists have to assume that somewhere along the line, for example, a rat (or something so like it that that’s what a layperson would call it) gave birth to something that wasn’t quite a rat, even though it was separated from its family by only a membrane of skin. This was somehow advantageous to it, and somewhere down the line its descendants gave birth to something a little less like a rat. Somewhere along the line the front paws became neither paws nor wings, but something in between that was neither particularly good at walking or flying, but somehow an ancient predator didn’t leap at this easy dinner, and eventually, slowly, over millions of years, this crippled lineage turned into full bats.
As Chesterton argued, a divine providence watching over the creature is more plausible than a run of luck like that. Your friend might reply that this is a ridiculous simplification, and that in fact bat evolution is nothing like that. Okay then, have him give a more plausible account of an evolution of flight in a creature that couldn’t always fly that doesn’t result in a crippled intermediate. And ask him to explain why the “earliest” bat fossils are fully developed fliers with echolocation.
> Having said that, it's interesting that they say creation happened like a historical event and, hence, unprovable/irrefutable. This clearly indicates that it is not science as one of the main principles of science is falsifiability. If there is no way that the "theory" can be falsified, it is no science. Example: the theory of gravity is falsified if it is proven that there is no gravity force between two masses. But since there is no such proof to date, we can assume that that theory is valid.
Creation didn’t happen “like” a historical event, creation is a historical event. If evolution happened, it would be a historical event as well. If life arose from non-living chemicals, it would have only done so once, and had it arisen multiple times, it would have meant something different every time. In that sense, what we are discussing is a historical question, not a scientific one, and so science is limited in what it can tell us about those historical events, although no creationist would say that science tells us nothing about historical events.
> The theory of evolution is the best scientific explanation we have today regarding the variety of species on Earth, at least untill we find a theory that better explains the matter at hand and/or falsifies evolution.
The theory of evolution cannot explain the origin of first life, because evolution assumes a reproducing organism to start with. Your friend will say that the question of abiogenesis is a completely separate issue. It’s not—many specialists call it “chemical evolution”, but even if we give him that, evolution cannot account for the genetic information needed to turn the descendents of the first microbe into life forms as diverse as corn, fruit flies, and people.
Your friend argues that you should ‘think for yourself’. You believe what is written in the Bible and is preached by your pastor. Your friend believes what is written in his science textbook and is preached by the likes of Dawkins. Is there the slightest chance he is mistaken about evolution? He should open his mind and not accept simple evolutionary answers.
A friend of mine said to me this on Facebook: "Creationism is not science. You can look up thousands of scientific journals, there's none about creation science. Creationism is a religious belief, not science. So I guess we're talking about different things here. I'm talking about science, you're talking about Christianity.
Just one caveat, if you start challenging scientific theories with religious teachings, you risk being as ridiculous as Pope Pius when he disagreed with Galileo's heliocentric view. And I'm not 'sure' about evolution. I'm no scientist, so my view doesn't matter. I merely agree with scientists on scientific matters, just like I agree with Mourinho on football or Jon Favreau on speech writing."
Please help me answer his challenges. Thanks.
This is their reply:
Creation at its core is not about scientific claims, but historical ones. While refuting the scientific claims of evolutionists is an important part of what we do, this in and of itself does not disprove evolution, because theoretically there could be some mechanism we haven’t discovered yet. So our rejection of evolution does not have to do with the scientific evidence per se, but our acceptance of the truth of the Bible’s historical account of the creation of the world by God in 6 literal days.
While some areas of the creation/evolution debate are carried out in the scientific arena, like whether or not there is a plausible mechanism that would bring about the conditions required for naturalistic evolution, the most vital questions are in the historical arena, because we’re not debating things that we can test in a lab, but one-time events. As N.T. Wright points out in Surprised by Hope,
“There are, after all, different types of knowing. Science studies the repeatable; history studies the unrepeatable. Caesar only crossed the Rubicon once, and if he'd crossed it again it would have meant something different the second time. There was, and could be, only one first landing on the moon. The fall of the second Jerusalem Temple took place in A.D. 70 and never happened again. Historians don't see this as a problem and are usually not shy about declaring that these events certainly took place, even though we can't repeat them in a laboratory.
“But when people say, "But that can't have happened because we know that that sort of thing doesn't actually happen," they are appealing to a would-be scientific principle of history, namely, the principle of analogy. The problem with analogy is that it never quite gets you far enough. History is full of unlikely things that happened once and once only, with the result that the analogies are often at best partial. In any case, if someone declares that certain kinds of events "don't normally happen" that merely invites the retort, "Who says?" ...
“So how does the historian work when the evidence points toward things that we do not normally expect? …Sooner or later questions of worldview begin to loom in the background, and the question of what kinds of material the historian will allow onstage is inevitably affected by the worldview in which he or she lives.”
We’ve got a lot of articles on the Galileo myth (for instance http://creation.com/galileo-quadricentennial); Galileo didn’t get in trouble for promoting heliocentrism, but for promoting what was then just a pretty good hypothesis as if it already were a proven fact, and his arrogance. In fact, it was the Aristotelian establishment in the universities, not the Church, who was the first to attack him. The Church initially supported him!
Which scientists does he agree with, though? Evolutionist scientists agree that evolution happened, but it’s hard to get them to agree exactly how that happened! And then there are scientists who believe that the evidence in their specialty supports not evolution but some form of Intelligent Design or creationism (although not all of those scientists would agree with biblical creation). CMI employs more scientists than any other Christian organization to the best of my knowledge, and they all believe that the evidence from their specialties fits better with biblical creation than with evolution.
Me:
Here's what my friend replied me:
"Haha, first of all, my sincere respect to you for taking what I thought as a casual discussion seriously.
I suppose you want me to counter their arguments, so here it is:
One of the first things I noticed is that they (CMI) seem to indicate that scientists are not evolutionists. This is very skewed. You can ask, google around or approach jc/univ biology/paleontology teachers/professors, find out how many of them are evolutionists.
Just to give you a perspective, in the scientific community, the theory of evolution is almost as solid as the theory of gravity. As I said, scientific journals are filled with articles about evolution. All scientists are evolutionists, except the cuckoo ones.I wrote a paper about (social) evolution last year, so I read quite a lot of them for my literature review. All the published articles agreed with evolution.
Having said that, it's interesting that they say creation happened like a historical event and, hence, unprovable/irrefutable. This clearly indicates that it is not science as one of the main principles of science is falsifiability. If there is no way that the "theory" can be falsified, it is no science. Example: the theory of gravity is falsified if it is proven that there is no gravity force between two masses. But since there is no such proof to date, we can assume that that theory is valid.
The theory of evolution is the best scientific explanation we have today regarding the variety of species on Earth, at least untill we find a theory that better explains the matter at hand and/or falsifies evolution.
I think I have answered to all of their arguments. Otherwise, please do point them to me. And for you, try think for yourself. Don't always believe what is said/written in a (holy) book or preached by a charming figure. Imagine all possibilities. Is there any slightest chance that you're mistaken about something? Open your mind. Ask questions, accept no simple answers. Life is much more beautiful if you understand its mechanism. (;"
i know i should be rebutting him myself but i lack the necessary adequate knowledge to do so. but one day i pray i God will equip me with the knowledge to enlighten the unreached! for now, pls advise me what i should reply to him. seems like i'm stumped!
Creation Ministries International:
I’ll reply to your friend’s assertions one-by-one.
> One of the first things I noticed is that they (CMI) seem to indicate that scientists are not evolutionists. This is very skewed. You can ask, google around or approach jc/univ biology/paleontology teachers/professors, find out how many of them are evolutionists.
Not all scientists are evolutionists. We don’t dispute that creationists are a minority. But creationist scientists have made important contributions to their individual fields. And heliocentrism and evolutionism were once minority positions, as was relativity; simply constituting a minority doesn’t make a view automatically wrong.ot all scientists are evolutionists. We don’t dispute that creationists are a minority. But creationist scientists have made important contributions to their individual fields. And heliocentrism and evolutionism were once minority positions, as was relativity; simply constituting a minority doesn’t make a view automatically wrong.
> Just to give you a perspective, in the scientific community, the theory of evolution is almost as solid as the theory of gravity. As I said, scientific journals are filled with articles about evolution. All scientists are evolutionists, except the cuckoo ones.
Gravity is testable. You can drop a ball, walk off a cliff, throw a computer out the window to observe the effects of gravity. You can repeat tests over and over in different conditions to see what happens. But you can’t perform the same tests with evolution; you can’t see life coming from non-living chemicals by chance. Indeed, the scientifically testable principle that I learned in biology class is that life comes from life, that is, if you see a living creature, it’s safe to assume that it came from a living creature of the same sort, which itself came from another living creature of the same sort, and so on and so forth. But they make an exception for the first life, which they argue came from non-living goo.
Also, part of the “life comes from life” rule is that the offspring will be the same sort of creature as the mother; rats from rats, bats from bats. But evolutionists have to assume that somewhere along the line, for example, a rat (or something so like it that that’s what a layperson would call it) gave birth to something that wasn’t quite a rat, even though it was separated from its family by only a membrane of skin. This was somehow advantageous to it, and somewhere down the line its descendants gave birth to something a little less like a rat. Somewhere along the line the front paws became neither paws nor wings, but something in between that was neither particularly good at walking or flying, but somehow an ancient predator didn’t leap at this easy dinner, and eventually, slowly, over millions of years, this crippled lineage turned into full bats.
As Chesterton argued, a divine providence watching over the creature is more plausible than a run of luck like that. Your friend might reply that this is a ridiculous simplification, and that in fact bat evolution is nothing like that. Okay then, have him give a more plausible account of an evolution of flight in a creature that couldn’t always fly that doesn’t result in a crippled intermediate. And ask him to explain why the “earliest” bat fossils are fully developed fliers with echolocation.
> Having said that, it's interesting that they say creation happened like a historical event and, hence, unprovable/irrefutable. This clearly indicates that it is not science as one of the main principles of science is falsifiability. If there is no way that the "theory" can be falsified, it is no science. Example: the theory of gravity is falsified if it is proven that there is no gravity force between two masses. But since there is no such proof to date, we can assume that that theory is valid.
Creation didn’t happen “like” a historical event, creation is a historical event. If evolution happened, it would be a historical event as well. If life arose from non-living chemicals, it would have only done so once, and had it arisen multiple times, it would have meant something different every time. In that sense, what we are discussing is a historical question, not a scientific one, and so science is limited in what it can tell us about those historical events, although no creationist would say that science tells us nothing about historical events.
> The theory of evolution is the best scientific explanation we have today regarding the variety of species on Earth, at least untill we find a theory that better explains the matter at hand and/or falsifies evolution.
The theory of evolution cannot explain the origin of first life, because evolution assumes a reproducing organism to start with. Your friend will say that the question of abiogenesis is a completely separate issue. It’s not—many specialists call it “chemical evolution”, but even if we give him that, evolution cannot account for the genetic information needed to turn the descendents of the first microbe into life forms as diverse as corn, fruit flies, and people.
Your friend argues that you should ‘think for yourself’. You believe what is written in the Bible and is preached by your pastor. Your friend believes what is written in his science textbook and is preached by the likes of Dawkins. Is there the slightest chance he is mistaken about evolution? He should open his mind and not accept simple evolutionary answers.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
20 June 2005
5 years ago today was the first time i met her, at Changi Airport.
This song comes to mind - If You're Not The One by Daniel Bedingfield.
If you're not the one then why does my soul feel glad today?
If you're not the one then why does my hand fit yours this way?
If you are not mine then why does your heart return my call?
If you are not mine would I have the strength to stand at all?
I never know what the future brings
But I know you're here with me now
We'll make it through
And I hope you are the one I share my life with
I don't wanna run away but I can't take it, I don't understand
If I'm not made for you then why does my heart tell me that I am?
Is there any way that I can stay in your arms?
If I don't need you then why am I crying on my bed?
If I don't need you then why does your name resound in my head?
If you're not for me then why does this distance maim my life?
If you're not for me then why do I dream of you as my wife?
I don't know life so far away
But I know that it's just a trip
We'll make it through
And I hope you are the one I share my life with
And I wish that you could be the one I die with
And I'm praying you're the one I've built my home with
I hope I love you all my life
I don't wanna run away but I can't take it, I don't understand
If I'm not made for you then why does my heart tell me that I am?
Is there any way that I can stay in your arms?
'Cause I miss you, body and soul so strong that it takes my breath away
And I breathe you into my heart and pray for the strength to stand today
'Cause I love you, whether it's wrong or right
And though I can't be with you tonight
You know my heart is by your side
I don’t wanna run away but I can’t take it, I don’t understand
If I’m not made for you then why does my heart tell me that I am?
Is there any way that I can stay in your arms?
This song comes to mind - If You're Not The One by Daniel Bedingfield.
If you're not the one then why does my soul feel glad today?
If you're not the one then why does my hand fit yours this way?
If you are not mine then why does your heart return my call?
If you are not mine would I have the strength to stand at all?
I never know what the future brings
But I know you're here with me now
We'll make it through
And I hope you are the one I share my life with
I don't wanna run away but I can't take it, I don't understand
If I'm not made for you then why does my heart tell me that I am?
Is there any way that I can stay in your arms?
If I don't need you then why am I crying on my bed?
If I don't need you then why does your name resound in my head?
If you're not for me then why does this distance maim my life?
If you're not for me then why do I dream of you as my wife?
I don't know life so far away
But I know that it's just a trip
We'll make it through
And I hope you are the one I share my life with
And I wish that you could be the one I die with
And I'm praying you're the one I've built my home with
I hope I love you all my life
I don't wanna run away but I can't take it, I don't understand
If I'm not made for you then why does my heart tell me that I am?
Is there any way that I can stay in your arms?
'Cause I miss you, body and soul so strong that it takes my breath away
And I breathe you into my heart and pray for the strength to stand today
'Cause I love you, whether it's wrong or right
And though I can't be with you tonight
You know my heart is by your side
I don’t wanna run away but I can’t take it, I don’t understand
If I’m not made for you then why does my heart tell me that I am?
Is there any way that I can stay in your arms?
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
My love-hate relationship with National Service
In my life, there are two groups of people: those who misunderstand me due to some of my actions and those who choose to be understanding towards me despite those same actions.
i thank God for both.
The first group tells me that Jesus was treated the same way and the second group tells me that is how Jesus treats others.
One day i will be able to choose to love the second group of people with God's help.
To sum up my love-hate relationship with National Service: i love it enough to survive through it, and i hate it enough to prevent myself from signing on.
i thank God for both.
The first group tells me that Jesus was treated the same way and the second group tells me that is how Jesus treats others.
One day i will be able to choose to love the second group of people with God's help.
To sum up my love-hate relationship with National Service: i love it enough to survive through it, and i hate it enough to prevent myself from signing on.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Monday, May 17, 2010
A Biblical response to bad times
Though the cherry trees don't blossom and the strawberries don't ripen,
Though the apples are worm-eaten and the wheat fields stunted,
Though the sheep pens are sheepless and the cattle barns empty,
I'm singing joyful praise to God.
I'm turning cartwheels of joy to my Saviour God.
Counting on God's Rule to prevail, I take heart and gain strength.
I run like a deer. I feel like I'm king of the mountain!
- Habakkuk 3:17-19, The Message
Though the apples are worm-eaten and the wheat fields stunted,
Though the sheep pens are sheepless and the cattle barns empty,
I'm singing joyful praise to God.
I'm turning cartwheels of joy to my Saviour God.
Counting on God's Rule to prevail, I take heart and gain strength.
I run like a deer. I feel like I'm king of the mountain!
- Habakkuk 3:17-19, The Message
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Psalm of the week
Psalm 139
For the choir director: A psalm of David.
1 O Lord, You have examined my heart
and know everything about me.
2 You know when I sit down or stand up.
3 You see me when I travel and when I rest at home.You know everything I do.
4 You know what I am going to say
even before I say it, Lord.
5 You go before me and follow me.
You place Your hand of blessing on my head.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too great for me to understand!
7 I can never escape from Your Spirit!
I can never get away from Your presence!
8 If I go up to heaven, You are there;
if I go down to the grave, You are there.
9 If I ride the wings of the morning,
if I dwell by the farthest oceans,
10 even there Your hand will guide me,
and Your strength will support me.
11 I could ask the darkness to hide me
and the light around me to become night -
12 but even in darkness I cannot hide from You.
To You the night shines as bright as day.
Darkness and light are the same to You.
13 You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body
and knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 Thank You for making me so wonderfully complex!
Your workmanship is marvellous - how well I know it.
15 You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion,
as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.
16 You saw me before I was born.
Every day of my life was recorded in Your book.
Every moment was laid outbefore a single day had passed.
17 How precious are Your thoughts about me, O God.
They cannot be numbered!
18 I can’t even count them;
they outnumber the grains of sand!
And when I wake up, You are still with me!
19 O God, if only You would destroy the wicked!
Get out of my life, you murderers!
20 They blaspheme You;
Your enemies misuse Your name.
21 O Lord, shouldn’t I hate those who hate You?
Shouldn’t I despise those who oppose You?
22 Yes, I hate them with total hatred,
for Your enemies are my enemies.
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 Point out anything in me that offends You,
and lead me along the path of everlasting life.You know my thoughts even when I’m far away.
For the choir director: A psalm of David.
1 O Lord, You have examined my heart
and know everything about me.
2 You know when I sit down or stand up.
3 You see me when I travel and when I rest at home.You know everything I do.
4 You know what I am going to say
even before I say it, Lord.
5 You go before me and follow me.
You place Your hand of blessing on my head.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too great for me to understand!
7 I can never escape from Your Spirit!
I can never get away from Your presence!
8 If I go up to heaven, You are there;
if I go down to the grave, You are there.
9 If I ride the wings of the morning,
if I dwell by the farthest oceans,
10 even there Your hand will guide me,
and Your strength will support me.
11 I could ask the darkness to hide me
and the light around me to become night -
12 but even in darkness I cannot hide from You.
To You the night shines as bright as day.
Darkness and light are the same to You.
13 You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body
and knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 Thank You for making me so wonderfully complex!
Your workmanship is marvellous - how well I know it.
15 You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion,
as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.
16 You saw me before I was born.
Every day of my life was recorded in Your book.
Every moment was laid outbefore a single day had passed.
17 How precious are Your thoughts about me, O God.
They cannot be numbered!
18 I can’t even count them;
they outnumber the grains of sand!
And when I wake up, You are still with me!
19 O God, if only You would destroy the wicked!
Get out of my life, you murderers!
20 They blaspheme You;
Your enemies misuse Your name.
21 O Lord, shouldn’t I hate those who hate You?
Shouldn’t I despise those who oppose You?
22 Yes, I hate them with total hatred,
for Your enemies are my enemies.
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 Point out anything in me that offends You,
and lead me along the path of everlasting life.You know my thoughts even when I’m far away.
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