Perfectly Unique: Praising God from Head to Foot

Introduction

Our bodies are unique. No two bodies are exactly alike. Though it’s rumored everyone has a twin somewhere on earth, and I kind of wish it were true, I believe God made us each individual and that we are fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14).

I will say that in recent years I’ve made friends with two different girls who look shockingly similar. One is a mom of four from Houston; the other is a teacher in Atlanta. They speak alike and laugh alike, and I promise you that they even own the same jewelry. I’ve seen it with my own eyes, in all its turquoise-beaded glory. I haven’t introduced them to each other. I fear what might occur. You know that scene in The Parent Trap where the sisters see each other for the first time? I think something along those lines might happen. Or they could begin to spontaneously fight. Which would actually be horrible. So I will let them stay in their respective states and never know about each other.

My two friends are not identical. There have slight physical differences and obvious personality differences. So there is no chance that they would be confused for each other. They are different. Each individual, each with her own story, each with her own history. Each made once.

I like the idea that God only made me once. Like paintings—there’s something special about the first one. My cousin Joe is an artist, and as long as I’ve been alive, he has been painting. In fact, he gave me a painting, and it hangs above my bed. It’s huge and purple and blue and black and weird. I love it. I asked Joe what it’s like to replicate art versus painting the original piece.

The short answer he gave is that the original is work, but fun. Any copies, exact or modified, are boring, if not mindless. Creating is just problem solving, and once you solve the original problem, it’s like you could train bright monkeys to do the replicating. The question is not unlike asking a chef to create the most special onion soup in the world, and after he or she has succeeded beyond any expectations, to keep making it every day.

God made you once. You were worth the work that first time. Then He threw away that mold because one of you is enough for Him. You’re enough. You are the sacred painting, the original. The best bowl of onion soup in the world. (By the way, there is a recipe for amazing onion soup in the appendix.)

One of a Kind

As I think about the uniqueness of each of us, the common comparison is snowflakes. We’ve all heard that no two snowflakes are alike. But the only places I’ve lived are Georgia and Tennessee. I don’t feel good writing about anything that happens in less than fifty degrees Fahrenheit. In Georgia, we only see snow once a year, maybe twice. So I’m not the expert on the originality of every snowflake. Likewise, I can’t really testify about the best snow boots or even the warmest long underwear. I can’t tell you how to drive in snow and ice, and I don’t personally know anyone who owns chains for their tires, though I hear that is common in other areas. To be honest, I wouldn’t even know what to do if my tires had chains. It’s just not that cold down here.

Maybe you aren’t from the South; maybe you don’t know what happens when it snows here. If we get enough to cover the grass, the news reporters are out measuring it live on camera. The world stops at the mere idea of a snowstorm. Seriously.

One February night, during my sophomore year at the University of Georgia, the weather alerts began to come across the television. Snow was coming. In a big bad nasty white way. Classes had never been canceled for winter weather, at least not as long as I had been in college. So we were glued to the television. Counties all around us were canceling school. Fingers crossed, my roommate, Candace, and I decided to embrace the idea that we wouldn’t have school the next day. That consisted of such behavior as ceasing all study-related activities and screaming, PLEASE, NO SCHOOL! off our balcony. I know, classy. Sure enough, within the hour, the university canceled all classes due to inclement weather.

The next morning? Sunshine and in the mid-sixties. I am not kidding. It was like the storm made a complete fool of our university decision makers. The students loved it. The administration did not. In fact, if I remember correctly, we went to the park and threw the Frisbee around. On our snow day. Welcome to Georgia.

So snowflakes aren’t the most common occurrence in my life. Instead, I think a better comparison of our uniqueness is blades of grass. Grass is a common denominator around the world… except of course in the desert. I’ve never seen two blades of grass that look exactly alike, and I’ve seen a lot of yards. I actually got out of my chair and walked out the back door of my house to do a little research. In my findings, based only on a small backyard and using no scientific equipment, all blades of grass seem to have a common form—straight and growing upward. But they come in different heights, widths, and shades of green. I cannot find two that seem to be exact matches. Maybe a blade of grass in my backyard and a blade of grass in the lawn of the Eiffel Tower are perfect twins, but we can never really know that, so we’ll assume not.

Humans are the same way. We may come in different heights, widths, and shades (not green, of course), but we all have a common form. Aside from rare exceptions, we have two arms, two legs, two eyes, one mouth (though mine could really count as two or three—I’m loud), a backbone, skin, organs, and so on. You get my point.

God made us this way on purpose. It’s no mistake that we are formed the way we are. But why? Why did God make humans in the first place?

Look at Isaiah 43:7:

"… Everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made" (emphasis mine).

God created us for His glory. Get ready for a little Old Testament lesson: the word create in the original Hebrew is bara. When this particular word is used, God is the only subject—He does all the work. Only He can create in this particular way. We may be able to create a painting or create chaos, but as humans, we cannot bara. So when God made you, He did something that only He can do, and He has done that for His glory. The word glory here is translated kabad in Hebrew. This means to bring honor or reputation, to promote something.

This short Hebrew 101 lesson does have a point. (And no, there will not be an ancient-language quiz later, unless you write one for yourself.) We look at the original language of the text to see, according to Scripture, that we were created, made especially by God, to promote Him, glorify Him, and worship Him.

The question: How do you do that?

The easy answer: You worship and glorify God by singing at church, by going to youth group and Sunday school (or some other Christian group that meets at your school), by telling Him how great He is. You glorify Him by not sinning. And that answer is correct.

But here’s the better question: How do you glorify God today? Here? In the middle of your not-so-easy-to-handle life? In the everydayness you have to live?

• On Wednesday morning at school?

• On Saturday night at your boyfriend’s house?

• On Tuesday morning at the breakfast table with your family?

• While sitting in a coffee shop meeting a writing deadline?

• No matter what you eat, wear, see, and touch?

• No matter where you go, whom you go with, or what you do when you’re there?

• When you aren’t at church or with your parents, or with your parole officer?

In all these situations, how do you glorify and honor God with your whole body? Those are the tough questions. And tough questions aren’t satisfied by easy answers. Because glorifying and honoring God aren’t just things we do with our mouths. We do them with our minds, eyes, ears, hearts, feet, knees, arms, and even shoulders. Our bodies were created to glorify God.

What? You don’t believe me? Oh, I get it. You’re thinking, This girl doesn’t know what she’s talking about. My body is just a shell. Just a carrying case for my heart and mind. A good-looking shell, but a mere shell nonetheless.

Oh ye of few memorized body scriptures! (Uh, that’s me too.) Check out these verses :

In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.

Romans 6:11–14 (NIV 1984 translation), emphasis mine

So the parts of our bodies should be instruments of righteousness. Interesting. Not enough proof, you say? Okay, then, try this one on for size:

Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.

1 Corinthians 6:19–20, emphasis mine

So often when we read this passage or hear sermons on scripture, it is related to sexual purity. That’s good, because (1) these verses do cover sexual purity, and (2) it’s really important to choose to be sexually pure in the midst of today’s culture. But honoring God with our bodies is about so much more than sexual purity. We’re going to dig deeper into that idea later on.

I love this last verse. It’s like the grand finale of body verses to me:

So we make it our goal to please him [God], whether we are at home in the body or away from it.

2 Corinthians 5:9

Our goal is to please God, whether we’re at home in the body or not. If you’re reading this, chances are pretty good that you are in your body. So the goal, in your body, is to please Him. We see in these scriptures that we are to honor and praise God with our bodies as a whole, as well as with the individual parts.

God Made Me

Confession: I’m not a lover of my body. I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve had issues with my body in the past, I have issues now, and I’ll probably have issues in the future.

This is just a weak spot for women. So before we go much further, you need to hear this: God created you the way you are. If you’re going to understand the importance of glorifying God with your body, you have to be okay with your body. You are the creation; God is the Creator.

I’m not asking you to worship the creation. I’m asking you to worship the Creator. How can I ask you to honor and glorify an Artist whose work you don’t consider beautiful? We’re going to talk about this more in the next chapter. But be ready. If you and I really want to worship God with our bodies, we have to be at peace with ourselves. It isn’t that every body issue you have is going to disappear over the next few pages, but together we will begin to unpack the heart of God in this area of our lives.

I’ve been amazed lately watching people’s bodies (in a completely normal way, not in a stalker/awkward way). If you really think about it, it’s rather unbelievable the amount of coordination and balance and skill it takes for one body to coordinate all its parts to do something as simple as get us down the street. Which is easier for some people than others.

There’s a spot at my college that we nicknamed the tripping spot. I don’t know how it started, but one day I was with four of my guy friends, and as we talked between classes we watched as a stranger stubbed her toe on a break in the cement. As she tripped, she turned, looked back at the spot, and then kept walking. The next guy did the same thing.

We realized we had gathered, completely unintentionally, at a comic gold mine. So for the next few days, we met up with a singular goal: to watch people encounter this break in the cement and see their reactions. There are a few different responses that people have after they trip, stumble, or make any type of walking mistake. We got a lot of the classic Look Back and Blame the Spot stares, many Ignore It Like It Never Happened responses, and quite a few Did Anyone See That? look-arounds. It was heavenly. We laughed every form of laugh, and we have reminisced about it many times since then. The spot has been repaired, which is a real tragedy.

I can retell this story with no remorse, because it is common knowledge that I am not what one might call super coordinated either. I tripped twice today at the gym (of course) and somehow managed to get electrocuted yesterday while trying to unplug my computer. I constantly have bumps and bruises that I honestly can’t remember the origin of. An acrobat I will never be. (Though I do have a deep appreciation for their skill set.) I think it is fair to say that some of us have more natural coordination than others, and those people should be in the circus.

Sitting here in the coffee shop, I watched a little girl, no more than four years old, run from the doorway and smack into the counter. Full tilt. Speed never decreasing. It was like her top half was more motivated to get there, so she leaned into it and couldn’t regain control. It was, in a word, awesome. And I’m again reminded that coordination comes with time. So maybe I still have hope.

Coordination, coffee-shop sprints, and the ability to fly through the air with the greatest of ease aside, anyone who can move, think, jump, cry, walk, or clap—you have an amazing body.

I encourage you, before reading too much more, to take a few moments and talk to God about this idea, this thought that you look just like God wanted you to look. Because I believe He has some real truth for you, and you need to be ready to receive it. I’m not asking that you be in love with your body, but I am asking that you seek to