Joyce and I and our family have once again been bountifully blessed by our great and gracious God!! As you likely know our fourth grandchild, and third grandson, was born June 23^rd. William Allen Tindell is doing well and we are in Arkansas celebrating and enjoying him and our family.

Whenever I consider the wonder and blessing of new life—really any part of life—Psalm 139 is one of those passages that seems to always come to mind. I have shared part of it below. As you read it and consider its great teaching, notice especially a few of the recurring themes. Look for the psalmist’s acknowledgement that God knows everything about him, and how that brings assurance and comfort and not fear! Remember with him that it is the Lord who is to be our guide and that His hand and His will are to be what steers and directs our lives! Hear his proclamation of the sanctity and blessing of life, even while being formed in the womb! Join with him as he praises the great God of the universe, knowing that although the Lord is the holy and eternal Creator and Judge, yet He is always close to us, and there is no place we can go where He is not with us! Praise God!

You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. ² You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. ³ You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. ⁴ Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely. ⁵ You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me. ⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.

⁷ Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? ⁸ If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. ⁹ If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, ¹⁰ even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. ¹¹ If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” ¹² even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.

¹³ For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. ¹⁴ I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. ¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. ¹⁶ Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

¹⁷ How precious to me are your thoughts,God! How vast is the sum of them! ¹⁸ Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand—when I awake, I am still with you.