Psalm 139

Chris writes:
Last night at Family Group (otherwise known as housegroup, a small church meeting) we meditated on Psalm 139 verses 1-18. This is the passage that Clare McCourt read out for us at the Thanksgiving service we had for Sarah, and the reason we chose it is because Sarah had written out verse 14 & stuck it on the wall above her bed. Verse 14 reads:
'I praise you because you made me in an amazing & wonderful way. What you have done is wonderful. I know this very well.' (Youth Bible)

However last night two other verses struck me, firstly verse 5: 'You hem me in - behind & before; you have laid your hand upon me' and verse 16: 'All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.'

We talk about Sarahs death as a terrible accident, and of how she was taken too soon, or before her time, but this is not in fact true. God's hand was on Sarah's life, her death was not an 'accident' in the sense of God having slipped up or made a mistake, because He doesn't make mistakes. And her life was not cut shorter than it was intended to be because all her days were ordained before she was even born.

Of course it seems to us that her life was too short, certainly far too short for our liking, and we will never know in this life why it had to be that way, but it wasn't a mistake that she died when she did.

Another verse Sarah had over her bed was Psalm 121, verse 7 'The Lord will keep you from all harm - he will watch over your life'.
God didn't fail to keep this promise, he just fulfilled it in a way other than that in which we would liked him to fulfill it. Who knows what harm he kept her from? What we do know is that he now has her safe with him where she can come to absoloutely no harm whatsoever.

Not that any of that means that we do not grieve (I spent most of the evening in tears). I miss Sarah more than words can say, (& now I'm crying again!) & I will go on missing her to some degree for the rest of my life on earth. But then I will have all of eternity to spend with her.

Chris