Perfectly and Wonderfully Made

For you love all things that are and loathe nothing that you have made; for what you hated you would not have fashioned. Wisdom 11:24

It was my great pleasure to give a talk to about 140 of the high school students in our parish last week. The topic of the night was; Created in the Image and Likeness of God.  I had my full size standing mirror placed in the doorway as they entered the room and it was a hoot watching them walk past it in order to get to their seat. It served as a great opener to the class
because we could laugh at our reactions to the reflection.  When we look in a mirror we see with human eyes and very often, the human eye zooms in on the physical feature we most dislike about ourselves. We are invited by our loving Father to look through His eyes and that was my message to that room full of amazing young adults!

We are all well aware that in our Christian walk, we are called to see Christ in others.  Most of us are very good at seeing the strengths of others and affirming their gifts and talents.  Most of us are also really good at overlooking the weaknesses or flaws in others.  But when it comes to us; we aren’t as forgiving.  We can be so hard on ourselves and deliver such harsh judgments.  This verse from Wisdom reminds us why that is such a bad idea!  Each and every one of us was created in the Image and Likeness of God.  Each one of us is perfectly and wonderfully made. Each one of us was thought into being by God Himself and to doubt that, is to doubt  Him. YIKES…not a good idea!  The very fact that God lovingly made us should be enough to make us leap for joy, but we get all tangled up in what our human eye sees. We compare ourselves; our looks, our possessions, positions and talents and the benchmark we use comes from a culture with some pretty twisted perspectives.  I told the students last week that I used to look in the mirror and think God had messed up because I wasn’t 6 feet tall, thin and gorgeous. I was convinced He had misread the blueprint during my creation. As I got older I realized He had made me perfectly because if I had been those things I had wished for; those things culture said I should be, I might have become a supermodel movie star living in California or New York and then there would be no fabulous marriage to Dave and certainly no Kevin, Jason or Shannon Wohlfert. God made me perfectly for the purpose He has intended…and I don’t know everything about that plan yet but I know He will reveal it to me one day at a time…and whatever it is…it will be joyful…because it’s His work.

 Today is the perfect day to look at yourself and see Christ.  How is He working in you, what parts of yourself can you see that are perfectly and wonderfully made?  He loves you and clear as a bell right from this passage in Wisdom, we can be assured that God cannot loath what He made or hate what He fashioned.  This reading is begging us to remember God loves us simply because He made us.  If you have ever looked carefully at a lady bug, you’ll notice they are exactly the same on each side…the detail in the pattern of their tiny spots is amazing. It’s also amazing that God would create a butterfly to be able to find its way to Mexico…without a built in
GPS. Now, since humans are the only being created in His Image and Likeness, that makes us way more valuable than an insect so if He took the time to put the perfect dots on a ladybug’s back and to design the flight pattern of the butterfly, don’t you think He put at least a hundred times more thought, love and perfection into the creation of the being made to be most like Him?

 I suppose today is a great day to stop worrying about what God didn’t create us to be, and focus on how wonderfully and perfectly He did create us. Today is the perfect day to realize it isn’t always about us.  God may have created us to be who we are, where we are because of someone else’s life we are supposed to touch.  It’s probably a good idea to begin each day looking in the mirror at ourselves through the eyes of the Creator!
 
A Seed To Plant: Look in a mirror and make a list of five things God made
about you that are wonderful and perfect in His eyes!

Blessings on your day!