“How precious also are Thy thoughts unto me, O God! How great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand” (Psalm 139:17-18).
Many times we do not realize how great the Lord’s love is toward us, and how many precious thoughts He has about us. Most of you who read this are probably young people, but if the Lord leaves us here and you eventually get married and have children, you will find out how much you think about them, and want their lives to go well. The Lord loves us a great deal, and it tells us in our verse today that His thoughts toward us are more in number than the sand.
We will spend all eternity in heaven with the Lord, and yet we will never be bored up there, or wonder what to do. If we think about this, it is really beyond our understanding. Yet the Lord has given us some illustrations of it in nature. For those who live in warm climates, He talks more than once in the Bible about the sand, and the number of the sand. If we think of all the sand in the world, we could not begin to count it. Yet man has never found two grains of sand that were exactly alike, when examined under a microscope.
But some people live in northern climates, where perhaps they do not see sand quite as often. The Lord also speaks about snow in the Bible, which of course falls in large quantities in northern countries. Yet with all the snow that has ever fallen, man has never yet found two snowflakes that were exactly the same.
All this indicates that God, who lives and moves in eternity, wants us to understand a little of what eternity means. His thoughts toward us are not limited by this world. Rather, His thoughts are so numerous that we will not exhaust them for all eternity.