Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

“I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” – Psalm 139:14

It is Ash Wednesday in the year of our Lord 2026, the beginning of the 40 day observance of Lent. What a time to be alive as a citizen of the USA and a follower of Jesus who we call Lord of life.

As I draft this post today, I do so with an oily, ashen smudge on my forehead, somewhat in the shape of a cross. It was placed there by our Pastor at morning worship along with the haunting words I have heard every year of my life, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” And since I was the last in line to receive the ancient rite, I was able to return the favor as I drew a prominent cross upon his brow along with the same reminder of our life’s journey and our mortality; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

When first was written the epic Old Testament saga of how humans came to exist, its authors had no clue how the universe was formed and how life on earth came into being. They were ‘theologians,’ not scientists. When they told the story of human creation in the second chapter of Genesis, they looked to the dust/soil beneath their feet to define the stuff from which Adam (adamah in Hebrew, meaning soil or ground) was born. And for over 100,000 years interment (burial in the ground) has been the primary means of disposing of bodily remains. It is this story and scenario that Christians are typically thinking of when we hear the Ash Wednesday mantra: “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

But today in worship as I pondered that familiar mantra I thought not so much of the dust of the ground as the stuff of which we are born and to which we return, but rather to the heavens above. Ash Wednesday and the weeks that lead us to Easter morning invite us to remember what we are made of. On Ash Wednesday, the words fall upon us with gentle gravity, “Remember that you are dust.” Yes we are dust, but more than the dust of the ground, we are dust that has traveled galaxies, dust born in the furnaces of the stars.

Long before the breath of life filled human lungs, before hearts learned their steady rhythm, before hands reached toward beauty and brokenness alike, there were stars. Nearly all elements in every human body such as carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen were forged inside ancient stars that exploded, scattering these elements throughout the universe. Approximately 93% to 97% of the mass of human bodies consists of elements created in stars. We are all formed from stardust. We are born from the death of stars. Think of how amazing, how awesome that is.

This is the stuff of which the Psalmist may have been contemplating when he wrote, “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” Psalm 139 sings of a God who forms with intimate care; “You knit me together… I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” This is not the corporate language of mass production. It is the intimate language of artistry, of patience and delight. The God who set stars burning is the same God who stoops close, shaping fragile flesh from cosmic remnants, weaving spirit into matter. We are stardust held together by love.

Lent teaches us to hold this paradox with reverence/humility. We are wondrous, yet not self-made. We are glorious, yet not self-sustaining. We carry within us the echo of galaxies, yet we depend upon breath we did not create, upon grace we cannot manufacture and have not earned.

The trek through Lent is to be a journey of rediscovery, recalling our place in the great communion of creation. The dust of our bodies is kin to the stars above our heads and the soil beneath our feet, to the mountains rising in silent testimony and to the creatures who share this fragile world. Nothing about us is isolated. Nothing about us is accidental. Every heartbeat is participation. Every breath is gift.

Yet in a world that is too much with us, how easily we forget this. We move through our journey as if separate from creation, earth, neighbor and God. We treat bodies as commodities, lives as expendable, creation as raw material. We imagine ourselves masters rather than members, owners rather than stewards. Lent calls us to remember whose and who we are, what we are made of and what we are made for.

If we are indeed “fearfully and wonderfully made,” then so is the world that cradles us. The same divine care that formed human life pulses through forests and oceans, through sparrows and stars. Reverence for God cannot be disentangled from reverence for creation. To praise God for our wondrous making is to honor that making in ourselves and others. It is to resist every voice that declares a human life disposable. It is to cherish bodies, our own and those of our neighbors, not for productivity, beauty, or power, but because they bear the imprint of divine love.

Lent also reminds us that wonder is not entitlement, not privilege. Being wonderfully made is not a license for domination but a calling to servanthood. The One who formed us from dust entered that dust fully, kneeling with basin and towel, touching wounds and embracing vulnerability. Divine glory revealed itself not in conquest and power, but in mercy and self-giving love.

I am reminded today that I am/we are dust, radiant dust, beloved dust, dust breathed into life by God. We are star dust sustained by mercy. As we walk this Lenten path, may we learn again to marvel. May we learn to see our bodies not as burdens but as wonders. May we learn to see others not as impediments to our wants and desires, but as cosmic mysteries of God’s goodness. May we learn to see creation as revelation more than resource.

And remembering what we are made of and for, may we choose to live accordingly with humility, with gratitude, with reverence, with praise, and with the quiet, courageous servanthood that reflects the God who formed us from dust and called us very good.

We are not accidents of metaphysics and cosmology.
We are wondrous intentions of divine grace.