Great Plains Daily Devotional for 9/7/2022

Psalm 139:13-18 

For it was you who formed my inward parts;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
    Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.
    My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
    intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
    all the days that were formed for me,
    when none of them as yet existed.
How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
    How vast is the sum of them!
I try to count them—they are more than the sand;
    I come to the end—I am still with you.

“Floccinaucinihilipilification” means to deem something to be worthless or without value. At age 7, I became a self-floccinaucinihilipilificationalist. I believed that I was worthless and without value. I had to do anything possible to excel and to exceed even some unreasonably high expectations. I needed to find some way to become the “Miracle Baby” Mom needed me to be. To become someone Mom could be proud of. I failed. I was second in my high school graduating class. I am a self-published author, because submitting the story of my parents’ accident to a traditional publisher was more than I could handle. I could not withstand a publisher’s rejection. I have a transactional rather than a litigation law practice. When someone asks what kind of law I practice (elder law, wills and trusts), there is sometimes an awkward moment of “Oh … well are you even a real lawyer, then?”
 
I think that many are closet floccinaucinhilipilificationalists. For whatever we have done or whatever may have been done to us, we declare ourselves to be without value, worthless. Our trials and our hurts diminish our value. Let me tell you something wonderful. God is an anti-floccinaucinihilipilificationalist. It means that God says no when I say I am worthless. It means that God says no when I think I am without value. It means that God says no when I think the world might be a better place without me in it. God says, “no, you are wrong. You are loved. You are my child. You are fearfully and wonderfully made.” God is an anti-floccinaucinihilipilificationalist.
 
The good news we can share is that God is an anti-floccinaucinihilipilificationalist. If God is an anti-floccinaucinihilipilificationalist, we do not have either the right or the responsibility to declare ourselves to be worthless. God sees us as having been fearfully and wonderfully made. He said so…in the Book.
 
I did this acrostic for the word, “Fearfully.”

We are Faithful, Extraordinary and Amazingly loved. We are called to be Repentant. We are Fantastic when we are Unashamed of the Gospel. We are both Loveable and deeply Loved by God. We come today to worship, Yearning for an even deeper relationship God.

Prayer for Reflection

Jeremiah 18:1-11 and Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18   
Deuteronomy 30:15-20 and Psalm 1
Philemon 1:1-21  
Luke 14:25-33