ghaH 'Iv fashions Hoch vo' chaj tIQDu'; je ghaH considers Hoch vo' chaj vum.
He who fashions all of their hearts; And he considers all of their works. Psalms 33:15
I build spaceships. And rockets.
No, really, it’s true. That is - I really do build (and fly) rockets. I’ve been doing it on and off since around 1969. Model rockets, yes, but rockets all the same. They’re the reason I first learned how to use a slide rule. Some of the first computer programs I wrote in BASIC were programs to predict and assess the flight of my rockets. And in building and flying these model rockets I have learned a lot about the big ones that go into orbit and beyond.
And my spaceships - well, they’re scale models of real spaceships - some of them even fly. And again, in making them I’ve learned a lot about the real rockets. I think my favorite is the Mercury Redstone rocket from Delta 7 - you can download that one for free yourself.
The reason these rockets and spaceships are of interest to me is because, in building these models I learn about what it takes to make the real thing, and I learn how they work and what they can do.
ghaH 'Iv fashions Hoch vo' chaj tIQDu'; je ghaH considers Hoch vo' chaj vum.
He who fashions all of their hearts; And he considers all of their works. Psalms 33:15
God made us - he knows what we can do. He doesn’t need to examine a model, or imagine what might be IN us - he knows inside and out what makes us tick.
When I’ve built a scale model of a spacecraft - I don’t find out what is going to happen on a craft’s mission, on any particular flight. Holding a model - even inspecting the real craft cannot tell me that. But I do learn what it can do and how it can be guided on its way. If you’ve seen the movie Apollo 13, you know that the people of NASA were able to help save the crew because they knew what the ship was made of, how it worked, and what it could do to preserve and protect the astronauts. The astronauts could be confident in the NASA crew’s assistance, because they knew what their ship was made of.
And God knows what we’re made of - that’s why I find a comfort in this verse. I especially like the New Living Translation:
He made their hearts, so he understands everything they do.
God made our hearts - in Hebrew leb (a word that occurs almost 600 times in the Bible) it is used in Biblical (as well contemporary) language to refer to the inmost self, the seat of emotions and thought. Klingons likewise use the word tIQ, the literal heart, to refer to the seat of self. Though never a really scientific term, it has a clear meaning, the “center, the essence” of one’s self. AND GOD KNOWS IT - HE MADE IT.
What a gift it is to recognize that God knows us thoroughly, inside and out. He knows what we’re made of. He loves us, he understands us better than I can hope to understand a spaceship by building a model - even if I built the real thing, I’d not understand the ship better than God knows us.
He made their hearts, so he understands everything they do.
And, in the day of trouble, in the day of sorrow He is the one to whom we can open our tIQ, our heart!
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