The Line Between
Created in the image of God! What a thought. I mean, really consider it. God . . . when you think of God, do you think of Him like yourself or maybe someone you know? I think we do that. When we really stop and think of God, we will often compare our thoughts of Him to someone we know, or maybe a combination of people (kinda a list of all the best of everyone we know). With that in mind, I would consider that we do God a great injustice.
Think about when someone we know closely, someone who we have known attributes a life of deep service and devotion to God. Remember the moment when you found out how human they really were? Remember the disappointment? Remember the anger? It might have been a parent, a sibling, a close friend, a spouse or even a religous leader. Did you struggle in your own walk of faith? Did you question God in the midst of it?
The reality is that we, all of mankind, is both God-like (being souls made in God’s image) and flesh (being mortal, made of the dust of the earth). There is a fine line between the flesh and the spirit, and often it is not a flashing neon line, but a dull gray one. What we do in our flesh makes an indelible imprint on our souls (and the souls around us), and what we do in the spirit can dramatically affect our physical and mental.
Only God fully understands our paradoxial nature. Fortunately for us, God keeps perspective. Numbers 23:19 says “God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?” He is true to his Word. Psalm 103:13-14 says “As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.” When God considers all of His magnificent creation, from the stars to the micro-organisms, he remembers us and remembers just where we came from.
To see ourselves as dust, is not an excuse to sin, but rather to truly appreciate God who loves us for all that we are and all that we could be. Consider your heart, when you look at people, anyone, do you see them as what they are, dust, simple, sinful, yet a vision of God, His image, possessors of the magnificent breath of God? When you look into the mirror, what do you see?
Psalm 113: 8-12
The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
Psalm 113: 15-16
As for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more.
