The Restorer Who Knew Every Brushstroke

In 2012, art restorer Dianne Dwyer Modestini spent over 18 months working on a damaged painting of Christ attributed to Leonardo da Vinci — the Salvator Mundi. She worked with magnifying loupes pressed to her eyes, studying each millimeter of the wooden panel. After thousands of hours, she could identify which brushstrokes were Leonardo's and which belonged to later, clumsy hands. She knew the pressure of his fingers where he had blended pigment directly into the surface. She recognized his hesitations, his corrections, his moments of confidence. She knew the painting more intimately than anyone alive — not just what it looked like, but how it had been made.

That is a faint echo of what David describes in Psalm 139. The Almighty doesn't study us from a distance. He knit us together in our mothers' wombs, and He remembers every stitch. He knows the thought forming in our minds before we find the words. He perceives our sitting and rising, our going out and lying down. His knowledge of us is not acquired — it is original. He doesn't learn us; He authored us.

Modestini could distinguish Leonardo's hand from a forger's because she had spent years pressing close. But God's knowledge is deeper still. He doesn't reconstruct who we are from evidence. He wrote us — every cell, every longing, every quirk — and His thoughts toward us outnumber the grains of sand.