“O Lord, you have searched me and known me,” begins Psalm 139. The entire Psalm reminds me that in the eyes of the all-knowing, all-powerful, ever-present Creator, I am highly-valued. Too often we let others indicate that we have significant shortcomings. And right they are if they are being constructively critical. However, that is usually not the case. More often than not, our whittlers are chiseling us down to a size which makes us “manageable,” or perhaps, “disposable” in their estimation, as the truth of Jesus is something which they desperately intend to avoid while grasping all the while with white knuckles their unrepentant lifestyles. Hmm. Do they not hear what the Scripture is saying about them as well? “You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you understand my thought from afar…Even before there is a word on my tongue, Behold, O Lord, You know it all.” (Psalm 139:2,4) God knows us, and our detractors, because we have value to Him. Genesis teaches that at the point of our creation, God determined to instill in mankind His own natural and moral likeness. “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in our image, according to our likeness,’” a declaration that affirms that though we might have lost the moral likeness at the time of the first sin, we still hold the natural portion which is made up of the intellect, emotions and the personal will. The conclusion we should reach therefore is that the very intellect that we give so much credit to for our perceived accomplishments in exercising “dominion” over the created order, should also direct our attention to an open-minded exploration of the value each of us has and an acceptance that the value seen has been imputed as pre-existing to our discovery. For we each were “fearfully and wonderfully made.” (Psalm 139:13a) Not accidentally, as the vast leaps of evolutionary “theory” to explain the body part formations, decry sensibility. No, it should be obvious to the person of intellect that even laying the parts out for assembly will not encourage them to knit themselves together without outside intervention. Apart from an engineer, engineering will not occur. No, the intellect, spurred on by an open mind, directs our emotions to a “Wow-moment” when we can say with certainty as a matter of our own will, “Wonderful are Your works, and my soul knows it very well.” (Psalm 139:14b) Yes, we have value. Beyond our own limits of comprehension there is the One for whom all creation will bow. We receive the convenience of grace, unmerited as it is, to freely accept what we cannot do for ourselves – procure a safe-eternity for our immortal souls and an abundant life in the present, free from worry and unnoticed affliction. We are not disposable but redeemable. We are not to be manageable but to be managers. “I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Yes, we have value. And He and I know it very well.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 10:31:11 +0000
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