Unique: The Only One of its Kind

I read the other day an excerpt from a biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder. The author characterized her life as an adult as being pretty common and not much different from other women in the town where she resided in the Ozarks of Missouri. I didn’t read the whole book and I don’t know much about Laura apart from the children’s chapter books that she wrote that are loosely based on her life. Written in third person, Laura recorded her life as a pioneer girl with the details most likely embellished. What I do know about this lady who began her writing career in her sixties is this: Despite her “common-ness,” Laura Ingalls Wilder’s life was uniquely hers.

My life is uniquely mine. No one else has walked everyday of my life in my shoes. I think there is a way we slip away from grandeur of our Creator when we take people and throw them in the stereotypical cultural grouping of their time and place. Woven in our mother’s wombs, we are delivered into a time and place that define us in many ways, yet individually our experiences and the circumstances that shape our destiny can never be duplicated. Like our fingerprints, we alone are shaped into who we are and who we are becoming.

We are born and a certificate is made with the day, the time, our parent’s names. Our given name is typed out on a piece of paper, the first recording of our existence upon this earth. Before our body was formed our life began in the mind of God as recorded in the Bible:

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you…”  (Jeremiah 1:5a)

God knows. He knew. He is not surprised. He is not surprised that we have struggled at times----that we draw near and then pull away to walk in the way that seems right.  He allows the opportunity to live within the boundaries of life and to suffer the consequences of a world where Sin rules. He knows we will fall prey to the enemy’s destructive schemes. It is in this uncertain world that we look for and find the God we desperately need. The One who will ground us, an anchor in the midst of often storm ravaged lives.  

We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain…  (Hebrews 6:19a)

Only a person with an anchored soul dare enter behind the curtain to fall before God, undone, dropping to the knees before Holiness and finding hope in the unfailing promises of God.  Covered with the blood of Christ, those who receive the Way, the Truth, and Life enter into that Holy Place and find a Father who hears heart cries even when no sound is uttered. Behind the curtain, all of the rest of life falls away. One unique person takes the incredible opportunity to enter into the presence of an indescribable God and is transformed.

… since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh,   (Hebrews 10:19-20)

Is it not the heart’s desire to be known, to be sure and steadfast, filled with hope, confident? God wanted those heart desires met so He sent his Son to make the way and the Holy Spirit to lead us to the way.  What would have been hidden from us, a mystery that would leave us in the world without hope, has been revealed to us in the person of Jesus, His death and resurrection. The flesh of Son of God for the flesh of the sons of mankind allows for a behind the curtain pass to the heart of the Creator who loves us perfectly, individually---- uniquely.

…Fear not, for I have redeemed you;

I have called you by name, you are mine.   (Isaiah 43:1b)

With hope let us enter in.