God Created Us in His Own Image: No Ordinary People (Genesis 1:26-28; 31)

“Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground’… God saw all that he had made, and it was very good!”
(Genesis 1:26-27; 31, NIV).

“To err is human,” according to the old saying. Maybe so. But there’s lot more to being human than making mistakes and errors. We have all been made in the image of God. That urge to create, to bring order out of chaos, to make our mark on the world; the anger we feel in the face of the injustice, the pleasure we feel in the face of beauty, the hope we feel for a better future – all of that is the image of God finding expression in us, human beings.

It is true that the image of God we expressed is distorted, even fractured. But there it is nevertheless, glimmering in this interaction, shining in that choice, bursting forth in our longings. God’s image in us forever calls us back to the One who is its original.

That realization changes the way we look at ourselves. It also changes the way we look at others. “There are no ordinary people,” C.S. Lewis wrote. “You have never met a mere mortal.” Once you start seeing the image of God in yourself and others, the world never looks the same again.

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.