The vast sum of God’s thoughts even outnumbers the innumerable grains of sand on this entire earth. To think this through goes far beyond me, the author sighs. Even when I wake up from sleep in the morning, then you are still there. You are always with me, and I am with you.
In a cemetery I once saw a stone for a child who died very young, and on the stone was this engraving: When I awake, then I am still with you.
The believing parents wanted to show that their little boy, though he passed on early in life, was never outside of God’s view. That seems to fit, for the Hebrew verb heqisotî here can also mean when you wake me.
This can therefore also refer to waking from the sleep of death (see also Psalm 17:15; Psalm 73:23; Isaiah 26:19). A believer never becomes detached from God, not even when he dies.
This also applies when a child of believing parents dies.
This is confessed beautifully in the Canons of Dort, Chapter I, Article 17: Therefore, God-fearing parents ought not to doubt the election and salvation of their children whom God calls out of this life in their infancy.
Very comforting here are the words of Jesus the Good Shepherd: I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand
(found in John 10:28; also read John 11:25).
18 If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you.