Designed for Good
"For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb" (Psalm 139:13, ESV).
Sometimes it's hard to like the person staring back at you in the mirror. Even the best of us are complex amalgams of virtue and vice, good habits and bad. Only God knows the whole truth about any of us, but we see the grunge better than anyone else, especially if, like me, you are cursed with that strange kind of blindness that leaves the soul able to see the thorns but not the rose.
Such a perspective makes self-reflection painful and discouraging, and I suspect it's more common than most of us would like to admit. Life in a fallen world, furthermore, certainly gets complicated. Our sins, the sins of others, honest mistakes, and other blunders of the not-so-honest kind take their toll upon the soul. Life has left more than a few tender spots on all our hearts. Like Jacob, few make it through life without a significant limp.
What can we do?
Psalm 139 provides us with a helpful corrective to such seasons. This morning, please read it through the lens of the structure below.
Psalm 139:1-6 "Whatever you become, God made you."
Psalm 139:7-12: "Wherever you go, God will be with you.
Psalm 139:13-16 "Whatever You've become, I have made you."
Psalm 139:17-24: "Whatever you face, I am for you." What you need is not so much less trouble but less sin. David doesn't want God to kill his enemies so much as he wants Him to kill his sin (Psalm 139:23-24)
For God has devoted much time, reflection, planning, and providential care in making each of us exactly who we are (Psalm 33:15). None of this, of course, lets us off the hook when it comes to our frail, fallible, and fallen human condition. We become what we repeatedly choose (Galatians 6:7-10) and are responsible for all our actions. God, furthermore, can never be the Author nor the Approver of sin. Without denying any of that, God's promise to work all things together for good (Romans 8:28) affords much food for thought and hope. We are not accidents of history; instead, we are beings made in His image to reflect the creative genius of our heavenly Father, who is too wise to err and too loving to cause any of His children to shed a needless tear.
This truth should never leave us embracing mediocrity, accepting the status quo, or choosing the path of least resistance. On the contrary, the Christian must always be pressing on, going further up and deeper in. We should do so by looking forward in hope to the God who works in us to will and to do for His good pleasure and not by looking back in the rearview mirror gripped by regret, shame, and despair. For if God is for us, who can stand against us? Each day of our lives has been written by the One who is committed to making the end of our story much, much better than it began.
I know not why God’s wondrous grace
to me is daily shown,
nor why, with mercy, Christ in love
redeemed me for his own.
Refrain
But “I know whom I have believed,
and am persuaded that he is able
to keep that which I’ve committed
unto him against that day.”