My Body is a Part of Me
Your body is a good thing. The blemishes you hate, the love handles you pray will go away, the height you wish you could change, or even the texture of your hair, God made you the way that you are out of His divinely good hands. The body is integrated into who we are because it’s the way we both receive love from God and reflect it back to Him and others. Our bodies are not merely sacks of meat that carry us to and fro where we need to go in life, our bodies are a part of the good and perfect design that God had when He made you and I. Our lungs give us breath, our tongues allow us to taste what a good meal is, our noses sense the aromas all around us that give us the ability to take in the beauty of the world, our ears allow us to hear both the greatest of symphonies along with the sound of a mothers first word to her crying newborn, our bodies are good in so many ways.
My prayer is that you would begin to cherish the body that God has given you, view your body as a means to worship God, and see how God relates to us by becoming a man and living in an earth bound body Himself.
YOUR BODY HOLDS BEAUTY
The beginning of the Bible casts a vision for the way we first view God. We know God is Father, Friend, Savior, but the beginning of the book of Genesis paints God first as our creator. Creator of the land, sea, and all the inhabitants of the earth. The sky blue, the richness of the greens that exude from the trees, all were thought of and made by God, all for our enjoyment and His glory. When God creates, He is only able to create what He himself contains. If what you see around you in nature is utter beauty, know that God is infinitely more beautiful than you could ever dream of. His kindness is unmatched, His compassion is infinite, and His goodness flows in all He does because goodness is what defines who He is. Jesus showed this by using His touch as a means of healing and loving people. Jesus healed the blind man by sincerely touching his eyes so that he would see clearly, Jesus allowed himself to be touched by the woman who bled to display his vulnerability so that she would be healed bodily and in soul. Jesus touched and allowed himself to be touched, because to touch and care for the body means to care for the whole person. A person's body can never be separated from the essence of who they are because their body is connected to who they‘ve been made to be. God cares for our bodies and souls holistically.
If that’s the description of the God who made you, what would it mean that you’re made in His image? It means you too can possess and live out the traits God Himself has. Not perfectly, not out of sheer will power, but through practicing the formations that God calls us to so that our inner life (or our soul) would begin to have a spirit of gentleness, self control, patience, joy, and love that we can share with the people in our lives. When you hug your friend in your time of need, you're displaying that God cares for them through your caring touch. When you speak wisdom over a complex situation in life for a loved one, you’re showing that there’s wisdom God can provide for every area of life, and this is beautiful. Through your body, you’re able to bless and display the beauty of God through the way you live and act.
YOUR BODY WAS MEANT TO WORSHIP
Worship is, more often than not, thought of as singing songs of praise back to God. While it is one way to worship, it is not the only way to worship. There are plenty of ways to define worship, but for clarity, here is the definition I’ll be using: worship is the intentional aim of committing heart, mind, soul, and strength towards making God look supremely beautiful and worthy of lifelong obedience. I define worship this way because it allows for all of life to be a way to worship God. From cooking dinner for your family, playing board games together, or going through the checkout line at the grocery store, God can be worshiped in it all.
Worship cannot merely mean to think about God (this is a part of it), it must eventually be fleshed out through the body. Don’t get me wrong, I love engaging with ideas and the study of theology. It’s what first inspired me to fall in love with God. Sadly, I had loved God yet failed to love His people (Mark 12:30-31). A true knowledge of God means living out what you know to be true.
JESUS’ EXAMPLE
It’s weird to think of Jesus having limitations, yet He did while He was on earth. He needed sleep, He needed food, He had to wash His body, and did all the other things a Jewish person would do in first century Israel. Jesus lived a perfectly normal life full of joy, pain, and everything in between.
Jesus didn’t neglect the physical limitations that His body had. He went to rest when He was tired, He ate when hungry, and submitted to the regular rhythms of what it meant to be a human being.
If this is true of Jesus, wouldn’t this also apply to us? Why would we not follow these humble yet good limitations? To submit to what our bodies are able to handle is to trust in the wisdom of God. It’s to trust that what he provides truly is enough to not just survive, but to flourish into what it means to be a person who follows Jesus.
Ultimately to submit to our humanity is to learn what it means to work and rest unto the Lord in all things. To work as though the kingdom of God is alive and present at this very moment, because it is. To rest as though God has never stopped working even when we slumber into the night, because He hasn’t. We live as though the world is kept in motion by God, not by our activity in the world. Jesus trusted in His Father to keep the world afloat by His mighty hand, do you also believe that God won’t just sustain the world, but you too?