Annie
Scriptures: Psalm 139: Jeremiah 29:11 Romans 12:2
God knows my sitting down and my rising up. He understands my path. And my lying down. He's acquainted with all my ways.
Why, how?
For You formed my inward parts. You covered me in my mother's womb, I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
That is a concept that is so far beyond human understanding. That before we were formed, someone, God Himself, had prepared everything that needed to be made in advance so that we would be the person that He desires us to be.
He did the preparation. The intricacy of the way we are created involves minute detail. I don't know how many blood vessels or nerves we have. Or sinews, or skin cells that protect me so brilliantly. But God does, He created the blueprint. He is the one who in His immense, immeasurable, incredible power poured thought into this. And His thoughts, His ways which are so much higher than mine, prepared a wonderful, beautiful creation because He is our Father. He has designed, prepared and created each of us to be unique. The preparation that has gone into our creation is awe inspiring.
He created us in His own image and yet we are so tiny compared to Him. Nevertheless, the preparation is intricate, intimate and painstaking.
We can never repay God for what He has done. But what we can do is prepare ourselves, out of love and out of gratitude. We are told not to be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our mind. Our preparation has to be laying aside our old way of thinking, our selfishness, anything that would get in the way of us becoming closer to God in whose image we are made.
For believers in Christ, we have to be prepared for the coming of the Lord, we have to be watchful, alert, all of the teachings Jesus taught. It is so important that we are ready for His coming. That we are always watchful, always alert. But our preparation has to be so much more than that. It must never be a reactive preparation. It must be preparation that comes from our heart, preparation that stems from a desire simply to be part of God, to be His and His alone. To acknowledge Him in everything we do and everything we say. Wherever we walk, whatever we do we have to be very careful that we do not bring dishonour to His name. Not legalistically, not religiously and not because we have to. But out of love for our Father God, because God first loved us. He laid down His life for us. We are His creation. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. He is our God who chose to make us out of pure love, who chose to create us and Who continues to choose to dwell with us. He prepared us, He prepared the earth for us to live on for a short time. But this is the beautiful thing, in the words of Jesus as He gazed in love at His followers, He spoke. I go to prepare a place for you.
He has a place prepared for us in eternity with Him. A place that we can't even begin to imagine but we can and we should try.
Prayer: Father God, no matter what we encounter, whatever is happening around us, let us always look up. To stand in awe of You, the God who has chosen to prepare an intricate blueprint in order to create us and then to prepare our place in eternity with You. Amen