Daily Manna · Day 217 · August 5
Fearfully and Wonderfully Made
“For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”
What are your reins?
The word is right there in the verse and almost nobody reads it, because we have stopped using it. Reins are kidneys. In Hebrew thought the kidneys were the seat of the inmost self, the place where conscience and desire actually operate; where we say heart, they often said kidneys, and God is said to try the reins, to examine what nobody else can inspect. So the psalm's first claim is not about how you look. Thou hast possessed my reins, and possessed is the verb for acquiring, forming, taking as one's own. He made the part of you nobody has ever seen, and it belongs to him.
Which is why the praise in the next line does not point where we assume. Follow the grammar: thou hast possessed, thou hast covered, marvellous are thy works, I will praise thee. Fearfully and wonderfully made is not a compliment paid to a body in a mirror. It is awe aimed at the maker. And the psalm proves it by refusing to stop there: it ends with search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me. The same man who says he was made in secret asks to be inspected. Being made by God is a claim on you before it is a comfort to you.
So do one concrete thing today for the body he made, rather than about how it looks: sleep at a proper hour, walk twenty minutes, make the appointment you have postponed twice. Then let the psalm finish its sentence, and ask him to look at the part of you nobody else can see.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 217 is Neither Jew Nor Greek (Galatians 3:28).