Psalm 139 is often at the center of a Christian's pro-life stance. The idea that God knew how beautifully made we were long before we were actually made becomes the evidence many people use to speak to the value of the unborn.
I'm not here to debate that view. I am here, though, to wonder out loud if that Psalm may have as much - if not much more - application to the beauty of the living as it often gets applied to the unborn. First, and I'm guilty of this almost every day, I think we sometimes forget that we are not a mistake. God didn't beautifully make each of us, he didn't know how intricately beautiful every single day of our lives would be before we ever experienced one of those days, only to decide a few months or years or decades into our existence that he'd made the biggest mistake of his eternal life. The author of the psalm wasn't talking about the unborn when he said this just before the verses I've referenced today: I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. So many days our souls get lost in the belief that we aren't so beautifully made. We see ourselves as broken. We forget how wonderfully God saw us before we were born; we forget his view on that didn't change once we started celebrating birthdays. Secondly, one of the real hazards I think of believing that it's possible God made a mistake with us is it makes it easier to believe the people around us were a mistake. It makes it easier for us to go through life trying to figure out who exactly ARE the ones beautifully made by God, and who are the people that make God wish for do-overs. I read Psalm 139 this morning as a reminder that in the midst of political battles, everyone around us is in a very real human battle. I read it and I am challenged to use the rediscovering of how beautifully God sees me as a nudge or a shove to love the people around me as beautifully as I know God sees them. All of them. I am not a mistake. You are not a mistake. I think starting with that belief makes loving ourselves and loving one another much easier than it would appear to be most days.
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Robert "Keith" CartwrightI am a friend of God, a dad, a runner who never wins, but is always searching for beauty in the race. Archives
May 2024
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