Bible in 90, Day 45: Fearfully and wonderfully

Psalm 135-Proverbs 6

I have these red birthmarks on my left forearm.  They’ve faded with age, but they used to be very red.  One day when I was about 5, I was minding my own business, eating my lunch at day care, when a teacher walked up behind me.  She looked down at my arm and saw these red splotches on my forearm.  She assumed I had a terrible rash/reaction, or worse yet, I was horribly burned.  She called out to another teacher, they both grabbed an arm and snatched me out of my chair.  They started running to the office, my feet barely scraping along the floor.  I asked in a panic, “Where are we going?” “The office!” they shouted.  Now I was really freaked out, the office was for disciplinary problems!  “Why!  What did I do wrong?” I pleaded.  “Nothing, it’s your arm!  The burns on your arm!”  “My birthmarks?” I said, confused.  They stopped.  “You have birthmarks?”  They put me down as let me resume my lunch.

I hated those birthmarks.

They were a constant source of low self-image for me all through my childhood.  Eventually, I stopped thinking about them as much, right about the time I got those warts on my knees.  Then there were the early teenage years, bulking up before the growth spurt, looking like a pudge.  Later it was my jacked up teeth.  I had a bad self-image most of my early life.

Psalm 139 is one of my favorite psalms.

It changed my view of myself radically as a teenager and early 20-something.  When I read David’s words, that I am fearfully and wonderfully made by God, it flipped everything around.  I no longer saw the birthmarks as in utero mistakes and blemishes on my forearm.  Now, I saw them as God’s own handiwork.  (By the way, it’s a big part of why I don’t have any tattoos, I got tats from God!)  I realized that the pudgy period was a step on the way to becoming the man God created me to be, from the womb!

God knits each one of us together in our mother’s womb.  He takes precious care to create each one of us.  David says that God’s thoughts toward us are innumerable (vv. 17-18).  I have a little jar of sand that an old friend gave me.  It serves as a reminder that, just as I couldn’t count the sand grains in that jar, let alone the whole earth, so also I couldn’t count God’s precious thoughts toward me.

In the last two verses, David makes an interesting application of this truth.  God knows us intimately.  Our forms were not hidden from Him while we were in the womb.  The same is true today.  We cannot hide from God, even in our inmost being.  God can search our hearts, He can test our thoughts.  He knows if there is any offensive way in us, and He can correct us.

Let’s remember that we are fearfully and wonderfully made.  We are just as God planned us.  Let’s love our own bodies, not in vanity and arrogance, but in appreciation of God’s handiwork.  Let’s remember that we are not hidden from God’s searching.  We cannot hide our sin from God, for He knows us inside and out.  Let’s bring our sins to God, including our self-hatred, confessing the wickedness of them, and seek both His forgiveness and His correcting truth.

*originally at Words of Reason