My Image is not Your Image

I was reading a book on anthropologists and archeologists (it was a lot more lighthearted than that sounds) and there was a paragraph that disparaged creationists. It mad me a little angry since up to that point I had been enjoying the book. However, I shouldn’t be surprised when this happens. We, creationist, are becoming the minority.

So, I began to list in my head all the marvels of the universe that are just too perfect to have just happened. You know, the way the earth and moon move so perfectly around the sun, the way a seed goes into the ground a hard little shell and comes up literally smelling of roses, the way animals know by pure instinct when it is time to migrate, mate, build a home. These things are so perfectly aligned, work in such synchronicity that in my small and fragile mind it can only make sense that God made it all.

And I haven’t even gotten to the good part. He made us too!

I look in the mirror in the morning to apply my makeup or comb my hair and I make a funny face at myself. It’s hard sometimes to look in the mirror, I keep finding the flaws. So, I ask myself, “How could I, this imperfect creature staring back at me, be made in God’s image?” For a moment I ask the question literally, as in how is my face like God’s.

But the question seems all wrong, so I rephrase it. “How did you want me to be in your image, God?”

That’s when I get the answer I was seeking. It’s not my face that was meant to be like God’s, though I know He at least find me beautiful every day. No, it was my heart that was supposed to be like His. It was my hands of good works. It was my feet to carry me to the world with His name on my lips. It was my mind, pure, uncorrupted, free to love Him entirely.

Those were the things created in His image. And just like the glowing petals on a Spring morning, I see glimpses of His work, but much too fleetingly.

See I know that we live in a broken world, we sinned after all, so the perfection that God imagined for us, we can only glimpse in the soft petals of a peony or in the shiny glimmer of sun reflected on the mighty ocean. We are only getting a taste of what God wanted for us. And even with that magnificence in front of us we won’t admit it was him, we won’t acknowledge our creator. He doesn’t even get the credit.