Your works are wonderful

Today was a really nice day as I was nominated for a “you make a difference” award at work, where staff are nominated for doing work above and beyond their normal duties. With some colleagues I helped get £200,000 into the district of Bradford to be spent during the winter months, on people who are cold, poor and hungry. It has been a huge honour to be part of it, as we’ve known our efforts would go directly to those who needed it most. We hope to run the project again next winter, if government funds are forthcoming.

I work in social care and am particularly interested in older people, but work with colleagues who care for people with a range of needs. We spend alot of time thinking about the needs of other people, and there are some really dedicated people around. Today it struck me that it really was nice for someone to know how hard I’d worked on something and to recognise my individual contribution, and for all the other people in the room, it was just really nice for someone to look at you on your own and say, yes that was a good thing you did there! It doesn’t happen very often, and we all enjoyed it!

I also felt that God was with me today, particularly, and I couldn’t explain why. I do know though, if I was cold and hungry and pregnant or in a wheelchair and unable to heat my house, or older and  just didn’t think I could affor a warm coat in the cold months, I would love to know that someone up there cares especially for me and noone else, so maybe that’s why I felt honoured today, as I’d had a small part to play in some of god’s people who really need to know his love, being blessed with material help.

I was reading a book about children written by a christian recently and came across this passage from Psalms, and felt it was something I might share with a colleague who is pregnant, but I think it’s just a lovely poem which speaks to all of us, of God knowing everything about us before we even existed, and loving all of us completely…

 

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,[a] 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.