The wonder of God’s creation is all around us. When I was a kid, our family attempted to visit Crawford Notch in the White Mountains of New Hampshire as close to October 7 as possible. There were two reasons for this little trip. It was my mother’s birthday and the foliage was at its peak. Many years later, I took my wife back to show her the beauty of the trees. Driving through the White Mountains in New Hampshire late one afternoon as the sun shone on that array of colors, it was so bright that I was forced to pull off by the side of the road and wait awhile.
The Midwest grain fields, the Arizona desert, and the Colorado mountains are other places where God displays His handiwork. However, God’s Word says that to see the crowning work of God’s creative power, we have to look at the human being, whom God has created in His own image and gave dominion over all creation.
God created you! Think of it! Look at these words, “You knit me together in my mother’s womb. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. Your eyes saw my unformed body.” The Psalmist was so overwhelmed that he said, “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful. I know that full well.”
Think of it! God has given us a mind and a will, which makes it possible for us to be free beings capable of making our own decisions. We are not puppets.
The Bible further describes the human when it says, “The Lord God breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living soul.” It is this soul that makes us immortal. All other parts of the creation die, including the body, but the soul is eternal.
Having revealed that we are His creation, He tells us to take care of ourselves. Paul writes, “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple.” Overeating, smoking, not exercising, burning the candle at both ends, abusing drugs and alcohol, and immoral living are a few examples of what the medical people say will eventually destroy the body. How easy it is to forget this counsel from both God and our doctors!
When I see the extra pounds I carry, how I fail to exercise, and sometimes burn the candle at both ends not getting proper rest, I realize that I am not properly caring for my body. That is sin. We are not caring for God’s gift to us.
Sometimes we get more concerned about protecting the environment than our bodies.
The Bible continues to give us insights when it tells us the body is only good for about seventy-nine to eighty years. “The length of our days is seventy or eighty, if we have the strength.” (Psalm 90:10) Read the obituaries and see how true this is. Our parts wear out. We can replace some parts like knees, hips, livers, hearts, kidneys, eyes, and maybe a few more. Yet ultimately we die. Solomon writes, “All come from dust, and to dust all return.” (Ecclesiastes 3:20) Paul describes our bodies as tents when he writes to the Corinthian Christians: “For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in the heaven, not built by human hands.” He continues that, while we live in this body, we will have our pains.
Intellectually understanding that we are going to die is not difficult for us, but emotionally this is very difficult to understand. Listen to our conversations. We talk as if life is going on without interruption. That is my style. Right now I am thinking about adding a four-season room to our house. It has to be mostly glass, heated and cooled, so that we can sit there and look out at the birds and flowers in our back yard. How beautiful it would be in the winter when the wind and snow are blowing around. Hearing this, my wife, who has had a serious encounter with death, says, “We don’t need this room. We are not going to be here that many years. There are better ways to use our money.” She has accepted her mortality far better than I have.
Well, are you happy with the body God gave you to use for a few years? Are you taking care of it? He wants us to enjoy it and use it to His glory as well as our own until the day comes that we leave it and receive our new body. Hear these words: “The body that is sown (buried) is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.” (I Corinthians 15:42-44)
This new body is offered to all, but only those who are repentant of their sins and have received Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord will possess it. In this old body we are sinners. This sin separates us from the Creator. However, He sent His Son, the Lord Jesus, into this world as a sacrifice for our sins. Jesus rose to win for us victory over death. We are clearly told in the Word that this salvation is ours if, in faith, we have received Jesus as our Savior.
Are you happy with your body? In Christ, God has an even better one prepared for us.