WHO ARE YOU?

Psalm 139:14
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.

Psalm 139:23
Search me, O God, and know my heart!
Try me and know my thoughts!

This may sound arrogant: I am wonderful. It’s true. I am one of God’s creations, so I am—like all of you—wonderful. This is good news when my scatterbrain kicks in and I fly off on tangents. This good news when I am able to see the big picture (despite those pesky details). This is good news when I take things so literally that they turn funny.

Why is this good news? More on that later.

This may also be arrogant: I am full of crap. It’s true. I am part of humanity that rebelled against God and polluted itself, so I am—like all of you—full of crap. This is bad news when my scatterbrain kicks in and the crucial point of a passage wanders about on the floor, lost in a tangle of tangents. This is bad news when I see the big picture, yet miss important details because—in my ever so arrogant opinion—the big picture is more important. This is bad news when I take things so literally that I jump to conclusions about someone’s intent and end up harming them and our relationship.

Why is this bad news? It is bad news because it means that everything I know and do and feel is polluted with my sin crap. It means the everything is tainted and damaged and capable of great harm.

Now, back to the good news. We are wonderful—despite the crap. Even more, our wonderful God came as a human—Jesus—who sacrificed himself for our crap and then rose from the dead to prove that the human crap problem was solved. This Jesus is willing and able to clean us up when we confess our crap.

It is good news because God can use a scatterbrained, big-picture-seeing literalist to bring him glory. He can use one like this to help make the world more like his kingdom and tell his story to all who will hear. It is good news because it means that when I am surfing tangent in a spiritual conversation at Bristol Café I am doing God’s work. When I am creating analytical graphs for administrators at Biola, I am doing God’s work. When I am asking literalist, clarifying questions to help someone decide what to do I am doing God’s work.

So, what about you? What do you do well? What do you enjoy? Do you know that God cares about such things? Do you know that if you have trusted Jesus that you are God’s partner, working with him to expand his kingdom?

So, what’s your next move?

Psalm 139

Also posted on Tangentrider's MySpace Blog

Tag(s): lectio

See CC License


“Unless otherwise noted Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.” http://www.esv.org/