It is He Who Made Us

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On Friday Ray and I did several errands between the matinee and evening performances of Journey of Faith. During one stop, I browsed a gift shop in search of appropriate gifts for our director daughter and actor granddaughter. I was excited to find pretty zippered travel bags with a Chinese design in blue and white. They seemed perfect for a play about Gladys Aylward’s missionary work in China.

I asked the sales clerk if she could gift wrap them. She offered to wrap them in tissue paper, put each gift in one of the small, specially-designed kraft paper bags the store uses for customer purchases, and tie them with ribbon. They weren’t exactly beautiful, but with the busyness associated with play performance weekend, I was thankful to have them wrapped.

Late Saturday afternoon, as we got ready to head out for the closing performance, I looked at the bags more closely. Printed on one side were white starbursts and flowers in a 1960s flower child style, along with these words: “We create ourselves as we go.”

Oh, dear! I rewrapped them in a hurry. What a terrible message and what a very contemporary message! We do not create ourselves. We cannot make ourselves. We will make a mess if we try.

Instead, we are people God made in His image, people intended to live under His all-wise and loving authority while being grateful that He made us as He did.

Baby Charles by Mary Cassatt. Courtesy Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, Gift of the Joseph H. Hirshhorn Foundation, 1966.

Thank you for teaching your children the truth—about this very basic truth:

Know that the Lord Himself is God;
It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves;
We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.
Psalm 100:3

 

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