Wonderfully Made

Consider your hand. Hold it up and look at it. Think about how you use it every minute of every day. How many tasks it completes, the sensations it feels, the way it moves.


Your hand alone has 19 bones, 34 muscles, and three main nerves from which a vast network of smaller nerves branch out to grip a cup or move a pencil, to feel the sting of a paper cut or the softness of baby’s skin. Your hand is more complex and delicate than any comparable organ of any animal. Your hand is a marvel, just like the rest of your body.


​Psalm 139:14 comes to mind: “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” The Message version reads:


Body and soul, I am marvelously made! I worship in adoration—what a creation! You know me inside and out, you know every bone in my body; You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit, how I was sculpted from nothing into something.


You, my friend, are a beautiful creation of the Most High. As you use your body today, you may feel more muscles than others and your back may talk back. But let that symphony of stretching and pain remind you that you are alive, that oxygen is flowing through your lungs, and blood is coursing through the very veins that the Creator knitted together. Paul wrote to the Corinthians:


Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)


We can take everything to a harmful extreme, but caring for our physical bodies matters. They are where we live while we are in this world and from which we work and care for others.


That physical self-care also gives us a picture of our spiritual health. Our muscles strengthen much like our faith does; they must be tested and challenged, stretched and exercised. Conversely, atrophy is defined as a “wasting away or progressive decline.” Our faith — and our bodies — weaken without use. James writes:


Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1: 2-4)


In other words, have your muscles ever been sore after a workout or other physical activity? It’s a good feeling, in a way, because you know you tested your body and its new strength will make the next challenge easier. Our faith is like that. Our trials are painful, for sure, but our reliance on Jesus is what strengthens us to endure this broken world, and as he told several people he healed, “your faith has made you well.”


Let’s pray.


Dear Jesus, thank you for making our bodies so intricately, so perfectly, so beautifully. We are in awe of what they can do and what they do without our awareness. It is true that they will break down, but we can trust you to heal them — either on this side of eternity or the next. Grant us physical stamina to do all that you call us to on earth and spiritual stamina to grow our faith in you. May our trials produce a supernatural joy in our hearts that you are making us perfect and complete. Amen.