« Note | Main | Gimme Back »

March 13, 2006

Uniquely You

We all know that we’re special. We know that there is no one out there who shares our unique imprint – not ever history or in the unwritten future. There is only one me and there is only one you and we learn that when we are very young. Free to Be You and Me, it taught us that didn’t it? But what some of us don’t learn is that there is only one you because God created you uniquely. He created me uniquely. In Psalm 139 King David wrote that he knew that he was “wonderfully and fearfully” made by the God of the universe. When you stop and really think about it – it’s indescribable.

Psalm 139:13-16

13 For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
16 your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.

A few months ago I wrote about Louie Giglio’s sermon at Buckhead Church titled “Indescribable,” and yesterday he followed it up with a new two-part message, “Alive.” It was, to repeat an oft-used word around here, awesome.

He started out by quickly recapping his previous message and showed us some new Hubble Telescope photos so that we could frame his forthcoming message. It is amazing when you stop to think about the universe that God created – how it’s bigger than anything we could ever wrap our minds around and how we, in it, are no more than a speck of dust. We are so minute in its vastness that we don’t even register on most images. This planet is so big to me sometimes – people I love are so far away and there are places and faces I will never see. Will I ever make it to India? Will I ever journey to the other side of our enormous, gorgeous Earth? But to realize that despite its bigness, our planet in our solar system in our average-sized galaxy is just a trillionth of the worlds and places and spaces that God crafted with his own hands… my brain stops functioning.

And then Louie said that if we turn that gaze inward, if we pause to consider the intricacies of our own human bodies, it’s even more amazing. We were created! There is, to me, no other explanation.

(This is a great link that discusses Psalm 139 and what it means that we were wonderfully and fearfully made. An exerpt: “When I open up the back of an old-fashioned pocket watch and see all of the gears, bearings, timing mechanisms, etc., I marvel at the one who designed and made it. But a single cell of the human body is so much more complicated. But when you put all of those cells together so that they work for the common good of the whole body and give it the abilities that it has, it truly is amazing. Truly, we are fearfully and wonderfully made. How grateful I am to be able to know this God who made us through His Son, Jesus Christ, and to marvel not only at His knowledge but also at His love.”)

Louie posted an image of a baby in utereo and quoted a medical journal regarding when and how we make our eyelids and the journal used the word “mysteriously.” (Mystery is God’s forte.) And of course my thoughts jumped to the still unborn baby Merrill, who at this moment may be making his own eyelids in the womb of my brother’s wife. Already that child is loved – not just his parents or his aunt or his grandparents, but also by His creator. There will never be another boy like him and I feel lucky that I get to be his. Already! Imagine the love God has for him, already, if I am able to feel this way.

That there has never been on this planet, and never ever will be again, another human being the likes of me – it makes my self-doubt and loathing and frustration seem like such a slight to my creator. Why would I question Him? Who am I to lament my big feet or my frizzy hair or my agitated skin? My heart – it beats. My lungs – they expand. My blood – it runs. All of it perfectly timed and built and crafted - by the same God who, with the sweep of His hand, sprinkled the sky with galaxies and billions upon billions of stars. He knit me in my mother’s womb and “all the days ordained for me were written in [His] book before one of them came to be.” How lucky are we?

Posted by hannah at 04:07 PM