What You Made

I am not intended to live as a purely spiritual being. Although You remind me constantly to look toward You, to serve You, to obey You, to bend myself constantly toward You, I am human. And more than that, You made me that way. You made this life for me and made me to live it. If I feel like a misfit, a spiritual being in a human skin struggling to get out, a bursting chrysalis, the fault is mine, not Yours. So what am I missing?

You already know what I will and will not do. Both my longing for a life more deeply Spirit-led and my apparently conflicting needs for food and water and rest come from You. You understand how they live and intermingle perfectly, but I do not. In the face of what Your Spirit offers, my humanity seems so irrelevant. Its trials cause unavoidable pain and its pleasures rush too soon away. I don't see the point of humanity.

But, maybe that is part of the point. I don't see with your eyes, after all. You gave my life to me, so it must be good for both of us. Whether it is a vehicle to emphasize your godhead or a gift for me to enjoy or both, I am human for a reason, Your reason. You never made me an angel or any other pure spirit. Instead, You gave me this life and told me to dedicate it to Your service. I am frail and full of faults, but I do not have to apologize for the fact of my humanity. I must simply live it.

For 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.--Psalm 139:13-16