The Refining Day 5: Your Body is Sacred

I wish my stomach was flatter. I wish my chest was bigger. Ugh, I hate the shape of my face. WHY are my thighs so large?

These are just some of the self-deprecating thoughts that have slipped out of my mouth, only to ricochet off the mirror in front of me and punch me in the gut. 

I’ve been at war with my body most of my life. Starving, overworking, criticizing. All in an effort to make it fit the standard society deemed would make me worthy. I found living in my body a curse. Exhausting, uncomfortable…at times unbearable.  I couldn’t see the goodness of my body, and I found myself angry at the body God had tethered my soul to. 

As I began to grow in my relationship with Jesus after experiencing a reversion in college, I found myself amazed and awestruck by the incarnation. God himself, who created the skies and the seas, who created life itself, descended to the earth as a small, weak baby.  God himself walked this earth in a human body. A body that could be beaten. That could be stripped. That could bleed and bruise just like ours. 

He became embodied. 

We are told as creatures that our bodies are sacred because God formed them. But an even greater, more incredible reason our bodies are so sacred: because God himself inhabited a human body. By descending as a man, God elevated humans, both body and soul. According to the Christian faith, we are not just body. We are not just souls. We are body soul composites. Our bodies are us. 

And our bodies are to be cherished. Loved. Cared for. Not abused, used, criticized, or beaten down. 

When I begin to hate my body or feel uncomfortable and anxious in my skin, I remember that God himself found the human body worthy to inhabit himself. He found it sacred. 

So I will treat mine as if it is sacred too.