The Simple life

“I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.” Psalm 139:14 (KJV).

God did not make us simply.  King David writes in his Psalm that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.”  My concordance mentions “be had in reverence” as one of the meanings of “fearfully.”  I believe David so respected the creative ability God used in creating his own person that he was in awe and reverence of God. For “wonderfully” my concordance uses “to distinguish, put a difference . . .” as some of the descriptors.  David knew that he was a distinct human being, and not made from a pattern used with others.

We do not often take time out of our busy schedules to think on what God made when He was making us.  In fact, the older we get, the more we inform ourselves about why we were made.  Often, our informing comes from our own opinions. We feel talented in a certain area and believe that is our calling.  We find some things to be easy, or pleasant, and prefer to do those things over harder, less pleasant things.  We simplify our identity.

One day I was driving home from work and saw a lady walking her dog. I was jealous and wished I had the leisure time to walk a dog; the “simple” life.  The Lord interrupted my thoughts, saying “you are fearfully and wonderfully made.” The understanding of how complex we are as humans came to my mind, and that God had not made most of us for a “simple” life.

If God had made us simply, we might be a reflection of a slug, or an amoebae. However, God made us in His own image, and we were meant to reflect Him. Ezekiel described God’s image, concluding with “and brilliant light surrounded Him. Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around Him.” (Ez 1:27b-28). The Lord is also fearfully and wonderfully made.

Though we are not the same as God, we reflect His image.  We do not see any scripture for God wanting a simpler life.  He equips us to do more than one thing in our lives (like walking the dog, my one “simple” thing).  Though we may have a calling, and gifts, we have many, many things we do.  Mothers also may hold down a job.  Fathers may repair their own homes, and work building others.  There is complexity to our lives . . . just as our own Lord is complex.  We were made to be multifaceted.

To illustrate being multifaceted, let us look at Ezekiel’s description of the Lord.  There was light surrounding Him, and it formed a rainbow.  When light fractionates, as in a prism, it forms a rainbow.  Whenever light hits an angle, or travels through an object that separates its wavelengths, we see colors. The rainbow surrounding the light of the Lord is a good illustration of Him being multifaceted.  A few of the things we read about the Lord is that He can have joy, be angry, work in love, give rewards, and meet out punishment.  He is a Creator, comforter, counselor, Teacher . . . there are not enough words to describe how many facets our Lord has. Yet all His different manifestations are in total agreement with Who His is: He is God.

Some of our greatest stress comes from not being in agreement with who we are and what the Lord made us for.  We like one facet of ourselves more than others.  We want to concentrate, develop one side of ourselves, and may come to resent other sides of our nature.  However, when we finally agree with all that God made in us, then we reflect His nature through our lives. Then the inner turmoil stops and there is less stress in living the lives God made for us.  We may not reflect every color there is, but we were made to reflect more than simply one color.  Amen.