Two Small Words

The beauty of the Latin term imago Dei, meaning “image of God,” digs deep into me every time my eyes fall upon it. Two small words, that speak volumes of the dignity God has placed on people from the beginning of all of mankind. To know that we are dignified, from his first creative conception of us confers value and honor upon our very existence.  

I can never seem to shake these words. They seem to be inscribed upon my heart like a stark and lovely guidepost.  

 “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.” Genesis 1:27

 This single verse swells with the stunning final stroke on the canvas of God’s masterpiece.  

 “So God created man in his own image…” 

 Mankind, all of humanity, from their origins, designed, cast, made by God himself as imago Dei. 

 This morning as I sat to study, my pen underlined and circled these words, “In Christ, God shows His image openly to the human race and reminds us that the imprint of imago Dei never fades.” 

 “In Christ, God embraces the frailty of humanity…”

 The human experience is made full and rich: purposeful, when we succumb to the consideration that we are an intentional design of a loving and masterful Creator.  

I can never drink in this loveliness enough. 

 I also cannot deny the stark and severe truth that lies within two small words, and how stunning it is that the whole of the gospel can seem to seep out in its fullest form as I read, “So God created man in his own image…” 

 This is the uncomfortable truth: To bear God’s image faithfully is to see his image in all of mankind, and to love as we love ourselves, and as we have been loved. 

 We do this not by forsaking our tribe, or the people that God has collected together so that we might have the privilege of doing life as companions. We do this by keeping our eyes open, our hearts soft, our hands extended and looking with intent for beauty where we have not previously been looking. 

 We look with the eyes of God. 

 We forge bonds intent on one thing alone, that we bear His image across boundaries, fears, failures, and our own tightly held ideologies. The call of imago Dei lies in the stark and in the lovely. It is a guidepost dimmed to the divisiveness of differences, and lit with the loveliness of seeing and being seen on Earth as it is in Heaven.