You Are Wonderfully Made

Our churches run a children’s summer program each year, mornings for a week in July. It’s an opportunity to learn about life, show kids how God is in their lives and connect to some of the stories in the Bible in a way that’s meaningful to them. And it’s fun. It’s always fun.

There’s a different theme each year and a couple of years ago, we called it Wonderfully Made, picking up on that verse from Psalm 139, “you are wonderfully made.” Stories, activities and crafts revolved around our relationship with God and creation, our connectedness to each other and how we build on those relationships with love, grace, respect, thanks and care. It was a wonderful - and wonder-filled - week. 

Except … if you know your psalms, you know that’s not the whole phrase, is it. There’s something else in there. In fact, the whole verse is “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.”

You can see why, like most people, we focused on the wonderful. Because we are. In every sense of the word, we are a wonder, we are full of wonder and we constantly wonder. Whoever you are, however you are, you are wonderful.

It’s the “fearfully,” though. Pretty easy to explain here: there’s more than one meaning for fear in the Bible. Yes, it can mean being afraid, but it can also mean awe, reverence and respect. Depends on the context. Jesus says “don’t be afraid” more than he says anything else and think of how often the angel in the Christmas story, for example, says “fear not.” It’s okay to be afraid, just remember that God is with you. But here, and phrases like “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” in Proverbs 9, it’s clearly about reverence and, well, wonder. Problem solved.

But it isn’t, is it. Fear, as an emotional response, has such a hold on us. It’s how we respond to perceived threats and the unknown, and the unknown is full of threats.

Is it, though? If “I know very well” that “wonderful are your works,” God, as the psalmist writes, then why are we afraid? Okay, many things can be wonderful and still be scary, fair enough, but approached with reverence, awe and respect we can engage them and learn and grow. And that’s the key part. Fear, of all kinds, and wonder, of all kinds, are part of the making of us.

I’m not the psalmist, but I don’t think that they were thinking “made” as just a past tense, done deal, finished product. I think they meant life, and in life we are constantly in the making, a constantly moving, changing, learning, growing creation.

There will be hurts and brokenness, sadness and joy, fear and wonder, of all kinds. But when we approach the world around us with reverent fear and curious wonder, with open minds and hearts, we build on the relationship that is already there in our connectedness in spirit. We aren’t “done.”