February 25, 2005

[Rev. Doc]

Dimples And All

"For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well."
Psalm 139:13-14

Have you ever noticed the pock-marks, or dimples, covering the surface of a golf ball? They make the ball look imperfect. So what's their purpose? An aeronautical engineer who designs golf balls says that a perfectly smooth ball would travel only about 130 yards off the tee. But the same ball with the right kind of dimples will fly twice that far.

These apparent "flaws" minimize the ball's air resistance and allow it to travel much farther.

Most of us can quickly name the physical characteristics we wish we had been born without. It's difficult to imagine that these "imperfections" are there for a purpose and are part of God's master design. Yet when the psalmist wrote of God's creative marvel in the womb, he said to the Lord,

If we could accept our bodily "imperfections" as part of God's master plan for us, what a difference it would make in our outlook on life. The "dimples" we dislike may enable us to bring the greatest glory to our wise and loving Creator, who knows how to get the best out of us.

Prayer: Ask the Lord to help you to accept yourself for the way He has made you, and glorify Him through that.

"This is the very perfection of a man, to find out his own imperfections."
~Saint Augustine