By David ReayFriday 14 Oct 2016LifeWords DevotionalsFaithReading Time: 0 minutes
Transcript:
Read Psalm 139:13-14
13 You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body
and knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!
Your workmanship is marvellous—how well I know it. (NLT)
A story has been told of the notorious gangster John Dillinger, prominent in the prohibition era in the USA. He knew the police were after him and realised they had his fingerprints on file. So in order to avoid identification he decided to dip his fingertips in acid to remove the telltale fingerprints. After an agonising wait, he was astonished to find that the skin had regrown and his fingerprints were the same as before. It seems he could not wipe out his identity.
Our uniqueness is God given. We are not created as job lots, as categories. We might share some physical or personality characteristics with some others but we remain stubbornly unique. It seems God delights in fashioning individuals who both bear his image and yet who bear it uniquely.
While it might be good for us to imitate godly models of behaviour in other people, we have no need to complain that we are not just like them. We can certainly endeavour to grow in maturity, but we cannot demand that we become utterly different people. God made me to be the best sort of ‘me’, not a clone of some other person.
After all, we have come ultimately from the creative and loving will of God, not out of some anonymous sausage machine.
Blessings
David Reay