Before I existed here, You knew me.
It is almost inconceivable — the idea that our soul existed before this brief earthly appearance. What we call “life” feels so permanent while we are in it, yet in the scope of eternity it is but a breath, a mist that appears for a little while and then fades.
Our earthly existence may be only an infinitesimal portion of who we truly are.
God is so great that time itself does not confine Him. He is not bound by beginnings or endings. What was born was this human form — this body, this personality, this story unfolding in minutes and years. But who we truly are feels deeper than flesh.
We are being.
Not merely a body with a soul, but something eternal expressed temporarily in form.
Before breath filled our lungs, before our name was spoken aloud, before our first cry pierced the air — we were known.
Scripture offers this quiet and staggering thought:
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I set you apart.”
— Jeremiah 1:5
To be known before birth suggests that we were not accidents of biology. We were intention. We were held in the mind of God.
And if we were known then — beyond time — we are known now.
There is something deeply stirring about the vastness of it all. The more one reflects on existence — on consciousness, on breath, on the mystery of simply being — the harder it becomes to confine God to a system or reduce life to an equation.
Organized religion offers language and structure. Science offers observation and explanation. Both serve a purpose. And yet neither seems to fully contain the immensity of what it means to exist.
There remains a mystery beneath the categories.
A sense that the depth of the human soul — its awareness, its longing, its capacity for love — reaches beyond what can be neatly defined or completely measured.
Not in defiance. Not in dismissal. But in quiet awe.
Perhaps the greatness of God is not something to solve, but something to stand before — humbled, curious, attentive.
The human story may begin at birth, but the soul’s story begins in God. And long after this body returns to dust, what is eternal in us will remain — because it came from Him.
Contemplative Prayer — Before Time
God beyond time, before this body had breath, before this world had language for me, You knew me. Not the name I carry, not the roles I play, but the being beneath it all.
I try to understand You. Religion tries to define You. Science tries to measure You. Yet You are not confined to doctrine, nor reduced by equations. You simply are.
And somehow, in ways I cannot explain, I am because You are.
Help me rest there — before labels, before arguments, before certainty. Let me feel the quiet truth that my existence did not begin at birth and will not end at death.
Strip away the noise of identity. Quiet the need to solve the mystery. Bring me back to simple awareness — the awareness of being held in You.
Beyond time. Beyond form. Beyond explanation.
Just being.
Amen.
