You Are Perfect in Every Way
It’s Springtime. Flowers are blooming everywhere. Chrysanthemums – the flower you have in your hand – aren’t expensive flowers, but if you examine it, you will quickly realise that it is perfectly made. Every petal is flawlessly placed. Even flowers we call weeds – if you look at them – are perfectly made.
When God created the earth, he did not keep his best work for the big or important things of life. God doesn’t operate like that. He took time and great care over each tiny detail in everything he created. Even the little things – those that are often deemed insignificant.
The same is true when God created people. I want to say to each of you, when God created you His attention to detail was perfect. He didn’t make mistakes when He created you. He didn’t have a bad day, He wasn’t grumpy, He wasn’t distracted. It’s not like He rushed to get you finished before his workshop closed. Every detail about you is perfect.
Why is that we find that so difficult to believe and to accept? I would be a little careful to tell the creator of the universe that he wasn’t on point when he made you!
If you were created perfectly that does imply that your friends and classmates were also made perfectly. Why is it that we trash others so easily? Does it make us feel better if we trash others? Again, I would be a little careful to tell the creator of the universe that he wasn’t on point when he made the person you are trashing!
I do also want to remind you: when God created you, it was about so much more than just your body. There is so much more to you than just your external looks. I love my wife not only because I think she has a beautiful body, but because of who she is as a person.
I want to put out three challenges to you for this term:
Challenge 1: Will you, once and for all, accept that you are beautiful. Let that reality sink into your heart. The psalmist writes: “We are fearfully and wonderfully made.” That same Psalmist also writes: “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me – too lofty for me to attain” Even he found it difficult sometimes to accept that he was fearfully and wonderfully made, but that didn’t change the fact that it was true.
Challenge 2: Can we stop trashing each other! Those snide, horrible comments when you “diss” each other. Even if they are just meant as a joke. Those comments are never jokes! A colleague of mine at St Andrews had a daughter in Grade 7. At a school gala, when she was on the starting blocks, a boy made a silly comment about her having become a bit chubby. She spent the next 8 years in and out of hospital and rehab because of eating disorders. One stupid comment was all it took.
Challenge 3: Shake it off when someone does indeed pass a stupid comment about you to pull you down. Shake if off! Our lives can’t crumble because of what others say.
In closing I want to say to us – and we know it – sometimes we blemish, we ruin this beautiful creation that God made. We spoil it and so do others. The bible calls it sin. It’s like pulling out the little petals of the flower in your hand.
Sin is not a popular word nowadays, but the bible never speaks about sin in isolation. It always speaks about the redeeming work of Jesus.
God didn’t only create us – He is also willing to recreate and restore us when we have destroyed His creation or others have done it for us.
There are so many stories in the bible about how Jesus restored people. Not only physical healings but also emotional ones. Those stories continue to this day. Jesus is in the business of restoring and fixing people that are broken. And we all have some brokenness in our lives. Jesus asked a blind man once: “What do you want me to do for you?” “I want to see said the man”, and Jesus healed him.
In the same way Jesus asks you and me today: “How do you want me to restore you?” Perhaps you are struggling with depression? Perhaps it’s a sense of unworthiness? Whatever it is, you can ask Jesus to step in. And he does!
God is not only a creator – he is also a recreator and a restorer of the broken. He is just waiting for us to ask.