TerryLema

When I open my computer, I see a picture of a giraffe. It is a picture I took years ago when Bob and I took our two California grandsons on a road trip while their parents celebrated an anniversary in Hawaii. It was a trip I will never forget. During that trip we spent time in a wild-life park and met Elle the Giraffe.

I learned a lot about giraffes on that trip.  I have often heard people refer to giraffes when they talk about whether or not God makes mistakes, or whether or not God has a sense of humor.  They’ll say … just look at giraffes!

 Well, we did look at giraffes—up close and personal on this trip.  Tall, stately, lovely soft eyes, gentle demeanor.  I learned that giraffes have the same number of vertebrae in their necks as humans, but theirs are more like a ball joint that allows maximum flexibility and strength.

I learned something else.  In the wild, giraffes serve as an early warning system for other smaller animals.  Because of their great height they can spot predators much farther away.  Herds of smaller animals will stay close to the giraffes because of this.  When the giraffes split because they see trouble coming, everyone else does too.

As believers in Christ Jesus, God has given us the responsibility and the ability to see trouble coming.  He has promised to speak through His prophets.  He also urges us to be on the alert for the ways of the enemy.  By His Spirit within us, He enables us to see from great heights in times of danger.

While we are warned in the Scriptures to resist the enemy and he will flee from us, we are also warned that there are times when we are to flee — from idolatry and sexual immorality, from the love of money and the evil desires of youth.

(I Cor 6:18, 1 Cor 10:14, 1 Tim 6:11, 2 Tim 2:22)

Sometimes you just have to laugh. Someone once asked me what my sign is, meaning the astrological sign. Another someone talked to me about my being part of the earth and thus affected by electrical and other currents and fluxes of rhythm, both natural and man-made. And others have varying theories of what I am and why I am the way I am – and what I should be.  Okay. So, whose opinion should I buy into? God’s, of course.

David wrote in Psalm 139 a phrase that always strikes me with amazement.  “For it was You who created my inward parts; You knit me together in my mother’s womb.  I will praise You because I have been remarkably [fearfully] and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful.”  [Ps 139:13-14 HCSB]

That psalm is probably very familiar to most of us.  And I hear people use the phrase I am fearfully and wonderfully made all the time. They go on and talk about our bodies and how wonderfully formed they are.  A truth we take for granted until something goes wrong in them.

That is not, however, the thought that always leaves me amazed.  It is the one that follows it … “Your works are wonderful.”

I am a work of God … so are you.  I am a wonderful work of God … so are you.

Too often our view of ourselves is obscured by what the world thinks we are or should be.  Too often it is clouded by the accusations of the enemy of our soul.  Too often it falls victim to our own insecurities and anxieties, to our life experiences, or our life failures.  Yet none of that changes the fact, the truth, that we are a wonderful work of God.

We need to stop listening to the voices around us or in us and start listening to the only Voice that counts!