You are a masterpiece! Do you believe it?! When I hear the word masterpiece, I think of a beautiful work of art. I envision a large canvas with numerous beautiful, bright colored paints culminating in a breathtaking image. So, when I hear that I am a masterpiece, I doubt it with every inch of my being. As a mom, I may look like artwork at times, with my uncontrollable curly hair and various stains and food on my clothes, but there is no way I AM a masterpiece. If you believe that, you are wrong.

In this fast paced world of high expectations, we get caught up and feel as though we are expected to fulfill all of our roles to the highest quality. We are expected to eat right, exercise, not watch too much television, clean the house, get our children reading and writing before they even go to school, hold a part or full time job and then somehow get 8 hours of sleep. We compare ourselves to others and we push even harder. We try to meet and surpass the standards. (I mean our childrens parties have to be Pinterest-worthy, right?!) What we tend to forget is God made us unique individuals with different strengths and characteristics. When we find areas in our life where we are behind, we think there is something wrong with us or we have failed. Yet in reality, we are just different and intended for a distinct purpose. If we place our worth in what others expect of us and our accomplishments we will fail. When we fail, we hurt and get down on ourselves. But God sees us in all our glory through the stumbles and victories. He uses our failures, downfalls and uniqueness for his good. He loves us because of who we are through Christ, not what we do. Our identity lies within our hearts and in the unique individual in which God has created us to be. We tend to place our identity in things such as our careers, roles, appearance and other worldly desires. We develop expectations and goals based on others. We base our identity on the hierarchy in our field, our financial status, how we measure up to others and our appearance compared to others.(Or maybe even ourselves before we grew a few humans.) The fleshly desires of this world are distractions to divert our attention from our true identity.

Our true identity lies deep within us. Each of us were intricately woven to be the person God wants us to be. Our story was written before we were even knitted together in our mother’s womb. (See Psalm 139:13-16) Our identity was formed before the desires of this world could take hold. God made us His masterpiece. I know there are many days we do not feel like a masterpiece. We look at ourselves and we see our faults, we see our failures, measured by those we encounter or sometimes just ourselves. We see others and wish for what they have or strive to be like someone else. Yet, Paul reminds us in Ephesians 2:10, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” We are his workmanship, his masterpiece. We are unique. Our identity was instilled in us long before we were ever aware of the many roles we would fill. We are each fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God and our identity lies within who God created.

Today, I encourage you to look in the mirror. Look at your beautiful self and view what you consider imperfections to be just part of who you are. These “imperfections” make up who you are and the work of art in which you were created. So as you look at yourself, I want you to call yourself a masterpiece, because that’s what you are. YOU are God’s beautiful work of art.