Fearfully & Wonderfully
It's a nice sentiment for someone to imply that you're made wonderfully… but fearfully, on the other hand? Not so much.
Are you made in fear? Or to be feared? Or maybe through a fearful process? It's not immediately clear what King David, the author of Psalm 139 means in verse 14: "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well." The psalm is commonly characterised as being part of the final Davidic collection (Psalms 138-145) and is thought to have been written during his persecution by Saul or his son Absalom's rebellion.
So, what exactly does our fearful and wonderful creation actually mean? And what does it say about God? In his feature Crossway article, Sam Allberry puts it this way, in relation to having your first child: "… there's a sense of awe and fearfulness because they are suddenly aware of how precious and awesome this bundle is in their arms." He goes on to explain that we should be in awe of the fact that God has made us so intricately and meaningfully – it seems to suggest a feeling similar to reverence or fear of the Lord is appropriate.
Richard Chin, former Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students (AFES) national director, explores more deeply what a rightful fear of God means in a series of 3 articles on TGC, the first of which looks at 'Fearing God Our Creator'. He reminds us of Psalm 2:7: "Serve the LORD with fear and rejoice with trembling", explaining that godly fear should draw us nearer to our Creator and joyful trembling, unlike trembling dread, pulls us into closer relationship with someone who inspires awe in us.
So, circling back to Psalm 139, it appears that David understands (at least in part) how elaborately and uniquely God has created us in His image. This leads to godly reverence and joyful trembling, which draws him nearer to God and enables rightful praise of his own fearful and wonderful creation.
As someone studying biotechnology (which, for those of you wondering, is basically a less useful version of biomedical science), I've taken a fair share of microbiology and genetics classes. To sum them up, I have two big takeaways: the first being how astounding even just the tip of your pinkie finger is.
Let me explain. There are tens of thousands of regulatory mechanisms and pathways occurring on both a cell and smaller-than-cell level in the span of a single minute to keep your pinkie doing… what it's supposed to be doing (that part wasn't covered at uni unfortunately). And that was all by Gods' design – all His craftsmanship, His creativity, His intentionality.
This brings me to my second takeaway, which is almost equally as astounding: the sheer number of lecturers i.e. so-called experts in their field, who truly believe that all of this is just a result of chance. It is truly mind-boggling. If even just the inner-workings of our pinkies are so complex, how much more awe-inspiring and reverence-demanding are the rest of our bodies?
Grace & peace,
Hana Baigrie (Ministry Intern)
