We are stamped with the Maker’s
Mark. Our bodies, minds and personalities have the design of God written all
over them. For this we not only should accept, but never appropriately condemn.
Appreciating how we’re made, and cherishing the very material of our unique
individual humanity, is one of the highest forms of respect we can pay our
Lord.
“I praise
you [God], for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful
are your works; that I know very well.”
~Psalm 139:14 (NRSV)
Love for the Lord commences there
and continues on—to love for others. Could we truly love others without loving,
indeed accepting, ourselves? No, we’d be too preoccupied in our concerns to be
concerned about the affairs of others toward compassion.
Still there are matters about us,
as we look deeply inward, if we dare, that we struggle to accept.
Appreciating Our Inherent Beauty
Right to the very bottom of the
barrel we may scrape, and from the top to the very bottom we should find what
God finds: pure majesty in the Creator’s mind. When God constructed us there
was no fault. We were built for a life that is ours, within our families, and
to live where we live. Being where we are is cooperating with God. We’re wanted
here. Indeed, we’re required here.
Whichever way we look at
it—whether over the length of our lifespan, the breath of our experience, the
height of our awestruck delirium, or the depth of our despair—we were made by a
perfect Creator, to a beautiful genetic design. This is one of the most
irrefutable facts. God made me. God made you. Both of us were made perfectly,
acceptably to God.
Knowing Very Well Our Value To God
Could there be a more important
role for each of us than to note our personal value to God? This, of course,
converts into a blessed knowledge of the inherent value of every created thing.
With such a wisdom stowed in our consciousness we appreciate everything to a
much richer extent.
If we will commit to agreeing with
the psalmist that we ‘know very well’ how fearfully and wonderfully made we are
we need to get comfortable looking ourselves in the mirror, and seeing our true
selves—the person beneath the skin.
Our value to God is
incomprehensible to us. Appreciating just a small taste of how we’re beheld in
Divine esteem is enough to begin to feel thoroughly good within our minds, bodies
and souls. It’s enough to rebuild any false, lagging self-perception.
© 2012 S. J. Wickham.
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