118 - Created in God's Image

Before our first breath of life, we were created in God’s image, with an eternal heart, soul, mind, and spirit, transcending all we could ever become according to the pattern of this world. Because of our unique makeup, we were imprinted with certain spiritual hopes and desires, love, joy, and peace, meant to be fulfilled by our Heavenly Father alone. He created us in His image so that one day we might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us. To see Him as He is and to see ourselves as He has made us. To experience all that was meant for us.

God was evident, yet not acknowledged, clearly seen in all His hands have made. In experiencing a spiritual reality, yet denying the knowledge of God, we sought to write our own story. God’s graciousness became gifts from the universe, and the work of His hands became Mother Nature’s handiwork. The awe we feel in seeing the beauty in His creation became a connection to a universal energy source, a life force, all the while renouncing the true source.

In writing our own story, we misplaced ourselves. We gave up an eternal calling for a worldly one, identifying ourselves not with God, our Heavenly Father, but with the things of this world, what was deemed important. We spiraled in an endless cycle of striving to be worthy of love and acceptance, to find happiness and peace, yet coming up short. We gave up God’s vision for us for one tainted by feelings of inadequacy and lack. We were so much more than we ever imagined, spiritual beings in a shell of flesh, looking to the inanimate to fill a spiritual void within.

We saw ourselves not as we were, but as the world told us we were, the sum of which was based on what we had or didn’t have, what we did or didn’t do, who we knew or didn’t know. We scaled ladders of importance by the world’s standards but denied our intrinsic value as God’s creation. Who we thought ourselves to be, shackled to the world, dictated all we thought, said, and did. We lived out a life we felt destined to live, but God had so much more planned for us.

We were created in God’s image to see ourselves as so much more than we believed, to be drawn back to Him. Yet now, through God’s Son, through His sacrifice on the cross and our faith in Him, we have been offered something even greater: to be recreated and reborn into the likeness of God Himself as holy and righteous. Through Christ, to receive a wisdom and understanding that transcends a worldly point of view. To no longer see ourselves in light of this world, but in a new light of who we could be in Christ, God’s saints, God’s priests. His plan would become our plan; as He is a light, we too would be lights to the world. A new purpose and quest would take hold of us, a new vision to live out, an eternal reality unfolding before us, a high calling.