lystn

Psalm 139:13-14 NLT

'You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous – how well I know it.'

I struggle with this statement of the psalmist the older I get. I’m not sure I thought twice about it as a confident youngster. Yet, as I’ve encountered life’s knocks, and my adaptability skills have been challenged and honed through each challenge, I don’t feel the level of self-confidence I once knew. It’s certainly a step of active faith to take these words and believe them, and even more of a struggle to live by them.

Over the years we each begin to discover our human flaws. I can certainly think of any number of situations I would love to revisit and behave in a different way for what I perceive might have produced a better outcome. Like everyone else I need solid friendships, and I continue to build some. Yet, there’s a deep sense of regret over those I’ve lost, in part due to my inflexibility.

How is it that all that bad stuff emerges through life? I grew up happy and contented. I enjoyed a stable home environment. Yet there is a dark side to me that expresses itself freely and sometimes inappropriately. Politeness seeks to separate this dark side and attempts to bury it. However, to do so will only prove to be a false denial of my true personhood, an attempt to deceive both myself and others.

My learning to acknowledge that darkness, ask for God’s help to change me and then to manage that old nature is as much about Christian discipleship as nurturing the ‘good’. What it reveals is that God mines human beauty from the totality of who I am, and who you are. We have been carefully knit together in the womb. I cannot simply cut off that part of me I dislike as if it were Peter Pan’s shadow.

QUESTION: What are the strengths and weaknesses of your character?

PRAYER: Lord God, help me live as you would have me live.