:[Operation]:

I know you remember the game. The anxiety it creates as you try your hardest to remove the funny bone. One foul move and you get buzzed. You wanted to be a doctor! If you can win at Operation, of course you can get through twelve years of medical schooling!

Let's use this pasty white, big bellied man as a stand in for ourselves. When you open up that yellow box, you take all the little white plactic pieces and make sure they ar ein the right place before the game starts. Starting tonight, we are going to take an inventory of what God has placed inside us. We are all pre-programmed by the master programmer. God has downloaded certain traits, skills, talents and attitudes. But many times, we want to be someone else. We don't understand what God has given us or why He gave it to us. Why is their butterflies in our stomach? A charley horse in our thighs? An ice cream cone in our brain?

Let's take an inventory of who we are. Let's see what are our strengths. Our weaknesses. AND-- Embrace the person God made! Be happy with who God created. You are designed to specific, non-reproducible measurements. In the thousands of years before you, and in those to come... NO ONE HAS BEEN, IS, OR WILL BE LIKE YOU. God wants it that way. God wants you the way you are.

I'll end with Psalms 139:13-15. The Message version reads...

Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out;
you formed me in my mother's womb.

I thank you, High God--you're breathtaking!
Body and soul, I am marvelously made!
I worship in adoration--what a creation!

You know me inside and out, you know every bone in my body;
You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit,
how I was sculpted from nothing into something.

Questions? Comments? Click away.