(Continued)  You showed Your mercy to me before I could perceive it. You came to me with Your kindnesses before I could long for them. Your generosity encompassed me before I could offer thanks for it. You are the one who not only marvelously formed me in the womb of my mother, but also drew me out from the womb. You have been my hope since I was yet at my mother’s breast. I was cast upon You from birth. From my mother’s womb You have been my God (Psa. 22:10–11).

When I consider how many die in the womb before coming to the light of this life, I admire and praise Your mercy all the more, because You brought me, alive, safe, and sound, out of the confinement of the womb into the theater of this world. How many years passed in which I was nothing! But it pleased You to build this dwelling of my body, and to bring it out of the deep and darkness of my mother’s womb. You have given me a rational soul and did not will that I be a stone or snake. To You, my God, for this Your mercy, be honor and glory forever. Amen. (The Daily Exercise of Piety by Johann Gerhard, Repristination Press, p.30-32)

Omnipotent, eternal God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I give You thanks. I praise You, I glorify You, that Your hands fashioned me and made every detail of what I am. You shaped me like clay in the womb of my mother. You poured me out like milk and curdled me like cheese. You clothed me with skin and knit me together with bones and tendons. You gave me life and showed me mercy, and in Your providence You watched over my spirit (Job 10:9–12). I will celebrate Your great mercy which You have shown me with eternal praises. Your kindness I will declare with everlasting songs of praise. You covered me in the womb of my mother. I will praise You, for I am wonderfully made. Marvelous are Your works, and this my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from You because You made me in secret when You adorned me with my various members in the lower parts of the earth. Your eyes saw me when I was yet unformed, and in Your book were written all the days that would be, though not yet one of them was. How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is their sum! If I were to count them, they would be more in number than the sands of the sea (Psa. 139:13–18).

(Continued on Circumcision and Name of Jesus)  (from The Daily Exercise of Piety by Johann Gerhard, Repristination Press, p.30-32)

(Continued )  To me You were given—shall not also all things be given to me? My nature is glorified greater in You than it was disgraced in Adam through sin. Because You assumed into the unity of Your person [Christ has two natures, divine and human, in one person] that which was only accidentally weakened by Satan, You truly are flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone [Eph. 5:30]. You are my brother. What can You deny to me, to whom You are most intimately joined by the same essence of flesh and by the feeling of fraternal love? You are the Bridegroom [Matt. 22:2], who according to the good pleasure of the Heavenly Father, bound the human nature to Yourself as a bride by means of a personal covenant. With a thankful soul I proclaim and acknowledge that I too am invited to the celebration of this marriage.

I am no longer amazed that heaven, earth, sea, and all that is in them, were made by God for man, since for man God Himself ordained to become a man. Truly You cannot reject me and turn me away, since You cannot deny [II Tim. 2:13] that You Yourself are a man, and therefore my brother. Now You can never forget me because You have engraved me on the palms of Your hands [Isa. 49:16]. For Christ’s communion with humanity daily and continually makes You mindful of me. Now You can never forsake me, since You, by the closest bond of the personal union, ordained to join the human nature to Yourself. However much, therefore, my sins hinder me from coming to You for mercy, nevertheless, the communion of the two natures in Christ will not allow me to be driven away. I will depend totally upon You, who totally assumed my totality, Amen. (from The Daily Exercise of Piety by Johann Gerhard, Repristination Press, p.35-36)