Those Divine Appointments

When I was much younger, even up until I was about 35, I had the mother of all inferiority complexes. I mean anyone with a college degree or was more popular or had a bigger house and newer car was automatically better than me. I just knew it. Hey, it was a burden to bear. My present outgoing nature and talkativeness was, as I see it now, begun back then in an effort to hide my deep feelings of unworthiness.

I have always been a heavy reader, and as I mentioned in a previous story, my eyes were dramatically opened years ago when I attended a Great Books Discussion Group meeting for the second time. The first evening, as a newcomer to the gathering, I was introduced by the leader of the group to the rest of the men. Wow! What an experience in humility that was. As I recall, there was a medical doctor and a couple of lawyers; there was a high school professor and an engineer and a CEO of some obscure company. Nearly everyone in the room was a college graduate but me. Well, to cut to the chase, we were given an assignment in the Greek tragedy, Aeschylus 1, called Agamemnon. Just hearing the name caused me to swallow hard. If possible, I felt even more insecure.

The following week, however, after struggling through the lesson, which was truly Greek to me, we gathered together to discuss the reading. Surprise of surprises, as one after another around the room revealed how little they understood of the Agamemnon tragedy; it occurred to me back then that I was head and shoulders above most of those degreed giants when it came to understanding what I had read. From that time on, I realized many of the men who possess degrees of one sort or another are knowledgeable only in their chosen disciplines. They are the proverbial fish out of water otherwise.

Some years later I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior and was born again. Soon after, through a personal family problem, a Christian friend introduced me to Psalm 139 and it really lifted me out of my doldrums. Over the years I have often referred to that beautiful Psalm of David and have been refreshed by it and assured that rather than feel inferior to others, I have come to realize that I am special in God’s eyes. He watches over me and is acquainted with all my ways. He knows my comings and goings and has laid His hand upon me. Wherever I go and whatever I do, I cannot escape from His presence. And He promises to give light to my darkest days because the darkness and the light are both alike to Him.

In verse 13, I read that He has “formed my inward parts and covered me in my mother’s womb.” With David, “I will praise Him, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made,” and am aware of His marvelous works. He saw me, “when I was made in secret.” He saw my substance before I was formed, and in His book I was written. And does He think of me? Absolutely! “His thoughts of me, if they could be counted,” David says, “are more in number than the sands of the sea.” How can that be? Why does He feel so strongly toward me, despite all my faults and stumblings and disobedience? Says David, all these things are so high and God’s knowledge is so wonderful, he could not attain it. Well, neither can I. The Psalm closes with a prayer: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my anxieties; and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

How can I feel inferior to anyone else when God’s Word reminds me that I am so special to Him? Imagine, each of us has been fearfully and wonderfully made in secret, and He knew us when we were in our mother’s womb. He knows and understands us far better than we do ourselves. So, as far as I’m concerned, having been fearfully and wonderfully made by my Heavenly Father, whose thoughts of me are more in number than the sands of the sea, that old mother of all inferiority complexes that once plagued the likes of me will have to find another son, or daughter, to trouble. Available, I’m not.