I am on the very last pages of Erwin Raphael McManus’ amazing book The Artisan Soul. The final chapter is a list of things to meditate on based on the chapters of the book. I decided I would blog a few of these. This particular prompt was “Focus on what it means to be created in God’s image.” I decided not to go real theologian.ogical with these and just sort of write from the heart.
We Christians talk about this idea of being created in the image of God, but what does it mean? Do we look like God? Does God look like us? While that would be immensely cool, I’m not sure it’s as much about appearance as it is about essence. We were created to be like God. He has set a pattern for us to follow in His Word and in Christ and in fact Christ gave us an amazing demonstration of godliness to be followed. Further when we come to Christ we receive the Holy Spirit who empowers us to be even more like God. He made us able to know Him. He put a desire for Him in our hearts and yes, He has set eternity in our hearts. Of course one of my favorite parts of being created in the image of God is that our Creator put within us the ability to create. Just as He spoke the universe into existence, so He allows us to envision things and bring them into existence, making the invisible visible, making imaginations realities. That He would entrust us with such a capability boggles the mind. I love the ability to create and I try to embrace it thoroughly and I believe this brings joy to our Father.
And He is our Father. That’s what He calls Himself in His Word. He created us so that He could love us and we could love in HIm. He created us to be in relationship with Him and His love for us is perfect and complete. Through belief in Jesus we can become His children, sons and daughters of God. Do we look like Him? I’d love to think there is a family resemblance, but what I know for sure is the better we follow Him and the more we love Him and others, the more likely it is that the world will see the family resemblance and want to know Him for themselves. We are created in His image. Maybe the question is what kind of picture of God to we give others by our lives?
AMOKArts 