Fearfully & Wonderfully Made…
The nature of this post spawns from my own insecurities and inadequacies. As I was changing clothes to partake of my daily obsessive workout routine, I caught sight of my partially clothed body in the mirror and my already wavering morale for the day, immediately plummeted and I wondered if I would ever be happy with the image that I saw starring back at me. I mean here I am, I’ve lost 115 lbs in 18 months and I’m still miserably discontented with my appearance. The voice of faith and reassurance in the back of my mind piped up, “You are fearfully and wonderfully made” but my own insecurities and natural tendency to argue all sides of an argument started to contemplate…
I was knit together in my mother’s womb, fearfully and wonderfully made, but that’s where the creation role stopped. Just like the nature of our sinful world, it was created perfect and without blemish, but we screwed it up. God created me, perfect and without blemish, but from there it was up to me to treat his beautiful creation properly and care for it accordingly. I think about this world, and while God knew the nature of what would happen, the tragic sinful existence that we all would choose, I’m sure it is never what he hoped for humanity. I have to think that in the same way, he looks upon His children which he created with such care and precision and he never would have hoped for them to become drug addicts, or alcoholics, or even food addicts, abusing his creation.
I think of it a lot like this. We are God’s masterpiece. When an artist creates a masterpiece he treats it with care. It is hung in the most perfect of locations, protected in the proper light, no one touches it, or defiles it in anyway. That’s the intended function of that piece, to be beautiful and prized. Imagine the horror that the artist would feel to find that his painting had been used as a table cloth or maybe a drop cloth for a painter, perhaps to wash a car or mop up the bathroom floor. In the same way he would still cherish the piece but mourn over its mistreatment. I think of humans in the same way, and for the sake of my argument I will tackle only the issue that I struggle with, obesity and food addiction. I wonder if God looks upon me and while he still cherishes me as his precious child and the masterpiece that he created, if he does not mourn in the way I’ve mistreated myself, the way that I’ve abused his creation. Over stretched, fed and indulged…
With these thoughts pervasive in my mind, I started a new Bible study for my personal benefit on the subject of jealousy. It wouldn't seem that the two were all that similar or related but the parallels, even on this first day are so astounding that I had to come write about it. Beginning the study we are diving it at the core issues of a jealous heart. Even on page 1 it says this "Jealousy is not the problem. Jealousy is a symptom of a broken heart." As a general rule I don't see myself as a jealous person, but that might be largely due to the fact that I typically only think of jealousy in the relationship setting. I'm not jealous of my husband's ex-girlfriends (I already won that fight) I don't distrust him, or get anxious if he is around other women. I trust him completely, but I have come to realize the things that I am jealous about, especially as it pertains to my health and physical fitness. I'm jealous of the size of other women. I get jealous that some of my close friends can eat whatever they like and not gain an ounce, while I must carefully calculate everything I put into my mouth. I'm jealous that I can't buy smaller sizes, of friends who own houses while we still rent, jealous of nicer things, vehicles, clothing, jewelry, financial security...but why does any of that matter?
I got to thinking about what it said in the study and as it developed more..."Jealousy is they symptom of a broken heart" The prime issue is distrust. Distrust in people, and distrust in God. In Psalm 22:9 it says, "Yet you brought me out of the womb; you made trust in you even at my mother's breast." We were created to trust. I know this is true when I think about the outrageous things that my kids will believe when I tell them. They believe in Santa, the Easter bunny, they believe that teachers live at school, Mommy & Daddy never sleep (because we always go to bed after them and are up before them), and even that the Binky Fairies take their pacifiers to new babies when they get too old for them. They have complete trust in me, and therefore it is my role not to betray that, though it will inevitably happen to them at some point in their young lives, someone will betray their trust, someone will let them down, something will go wrong. The key is to remember that we have lost trust in people it is the people who have let us down, yet somehow we mistake that for God. The study says, "The vacuum created by the lack of trust in our lives beckons jealousy into the empty space. Because so many of life's experiences cannot be accepted without the eyes of faith, we set our sights on acquiring earthly possessions or position to ease the ache of our bewilderment over what God has 'allowed' to happen to us."
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