Week 1 - Day 5 - Sunday - Psalm 139 pt. 2

You formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am wonderfully made; wonderful are your works! My very self you know.

I praise you because I am wonderfully made…

Really? Can that be true or is that something that does not relate to me? The psalmist is wonderfully made, or so he says, but maybe I should not be too quick to assume I can share in the claim. Except there is this. In the first creation story of Genesis, God, at the end of each of the first five days looked at his work for the day and proclaimed, "it was good." On the sixth day after he created humanity, he said, "It was VERY good." Not just good but very good. His work that day was even better than what he had accomplished before, at least from his perspective.  

Why? I can't say I have ever read anything from more accomplished theologians to answer the question, perhaps because there is no real question there. Still, I want to be able to look in the creation narrative for the sixth day where we find, in verse 27: 

God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

If God made us in his own image, then logic states we must be made to be wonderful. He is, after all, beyond all description so if he made us, he made us wonderfully. I find assurance I can share in the prayer of the psalmist be he a king or a lowly shepherd that we are wonderfully made. 

Another thought, Jesus prayed the Psalms during the course of human life and now we pray the psalms with him in the liturgy of the hours or whenever we pray the Psalms. He could say nothing else because he was wonderfully made and so we can share in the same wonder. 

So there is my rationale for being to believe I am wonderfully made, as are we all. Whether I believe it or can genuinely live it is another. I fear that taking the notion seriously might cause havoc since ego is a grave issue for me. I pretend one thing and act that one thing but in my inner being, I am not wonderful. I have done all less than stellar things not just in the past but maybe today. While we may be wonderfully made, what we make of our gift is another. 

I am turning away from this prayer to take up another, a new psalm of my own. I praise the creation around me, the birds, trees, grass, the fish in the nearby water but most of all, the wonder of the people who pass by to walk along the river with dogs, each other, or even by themselves. We are wonderfully made because we were made to be part of something bigger than us which is wonderful. God, help me to live in wonder today.