The creature that talks back to God
For it was you who formed my inward parts;
You knit me together in my mother’s womb. Psalm 139:13
Read Isaiah 45:9—13
What a delightful thing it is, at the end of this day, to consider the greatness of this God who has chosen to know me, to call me and to baptise me. This God has fashioned me carefully, and everything about me. And because I am not right now as I came from his hand, because I am a fallen creature, always striving to go my own way, I will find myself challenging God, striving against him, even finding fault with God. As utterly stupid as it sounds, and as it is, I will find myself trying to reverse roles, as though I could! As though I could be god over God!
Prayer
Dear Lord, that you should have to speak to your people as you did through Isaiah because they talked back to you! How dare they! But I see this in myself. ‘Where are the handles?’ I can say that. Why have you made me as you have? With my ineptitude? Why have you placed me where you have? Truly, I am part of a whole world made right but gone wrong; made for faithfulness toward you, but living in defiance, living for itself. When I catch myself in this mood, reclaim me from it. Restore me. I remember now how Jesus suffered rejection for me. He endured the full force of humanity’s defiance of God. Draw me to the place where I can actually take pleasure in your fashioning hand.