Thursday, May 14

God fashions all the hearts of them.
—Psalm 33:15

“Where did I come from?” my niece asks. She isn’t asking about the city where she was born. She is wondering about how she came to be, how her own little unique body and soul entered the world.

“God made you in your mommy,” I say. “God fashioned your heart,” I remember.

This line from Psalm 33 reiterates a scriptural truth: the insistence that God is not sectarian. God fashions the hearts of all the people in the world. Every single person. God has knit each of us together in our mother’s womb. No exceptions.

This affirmation of our common origin in God turns my sense of things upside down. It’s so much more comforting to think that God just fashions the hearts of a select few, preferably the few of which I am a member. Why in the world would God have anything to do with all the rest?

God fashions the hearts of all of us. Whether we act in accord with that fashioning is another topic altogether. Yet, deep within, all of the creation and each person bears the stamp of the God who brings everything into being.

And because of that, each of us bears the stamp of divinity upon our deepest self. That stamp may be hidden or obscured. It may be unknown or overlooked. The truth remains—God fashioned you, me, and everyone else.

Grant me the grace to behold God’s fashioning in each person I meet this day. Amen.

The Signposts for May originally appeared on explorefaith in 2006.