I'm Fearful and Wonderful

Reading: Jeremiah 1-3, Hebrews 9

I was a surprise to my parents, born late in their lives.

God wasn’t a bit surprised.

When I was in my early teens, a “friend” of the family told me that I should never have been born.

God had a different opinion on that subject.

So when I read God’s words to Jeremiah, I nod my head knowingly.

“The word of the Lord came to me, saying, ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart. I appointed you a prophet to the nations’” —Jeremiah 1:5, NIV.

I like that thought. It’s not unique to Jeremiah. David echoes it in Psalm 139: “…you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be” (vss. 13-16, NIV).

I was no accident, no surprise. My partially webbed toes were planned (though they never helped me learn how to swim!). My arrival a month before my mother’s due date didn’t throw God’s calendar out. The fact that I needed glasses by the time I was eight didn’t create any anxiety in the Almighty.  I was always beautiful to Him, every skinny bit of me as a child, and every not-so-skinny bit of me now!

He knew my birthdate and He knows the exact minute that He’ll allow me the first of the eternity of breaths that I will take in the perfect air of heaven.

God knows how He made me and what He made me for. And He does wonderful work—He said so!

Does that encourage me? You bet. It should encourage you too because what He told Jeremiah and David and me applies to you too.