Over the past few years, DNA testing has become very popular. As I went off to a genealogical conference this year, a couple of people at my church asked me to bring them home kits for testing their DNA.

Many of us are aware of the hype that this has received from companies wanting to help us to discover our origins and to connect us to relatives that we may previously have known nothing about. We get half of our mother's DNA and half of our father's DNA, and our siblings each get the same amount, but not the exact same bits or characteristics. That is why we are encouraged to have everyone in the family tested.

All the things that are pushed by the companies are well and good, and people are finding new relatives and new places of origin for their families, but I have come to realize that there is a lot more to me and my family than DNA.

Psalm 139:1,4,13-14,16b – O Lord, you have searched me and known me. Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely. For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed. (NRSV)

What David tells us is that life is much more than DNA; it is much more than family; it is much more than religion; it is God Who has known our end from our beginning.

In this psalm, David is praising God and telling Him that he realizes that it does not matter where he went, what he thought, or what trouble he got into, God already knew and was there ahead of him, even to the extent that He was there when David was created and grew.

What do you take from this? Are you able to acknowledge, as David did, that God knows you — your thoughts, your actions, your desires — and He is there with you at all times and in all places? After all, it is in Him that we live and move and have our being.

Prayer: Lord, we thank You that You made us, You know us, and You are with us wherever we are and in whatever we do. Help us, Lord, to remember this as we go about our day-to-day busy-ness. Thank You. Amen.

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About the author:

Ruth Burkholder <ruth.burk@sympatico.ca>
Stouffville, Ontario, Canada
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