Imago Dei…

// June 14th, 2009 // OUT LOUD THOUGHTS

We can’t be truly hospitable; we can’t invite someone into our lives, we can’t truly love someone, until we live in a place of sameness and equality.

I think I’m the frustrated writer right now because this is much depper and profound that my ability to describe it. The statement just doesn’t manage to convey all that I’m trying to say.

If others are “weird” or have strange ideas, does that mean I’m calling myself “normal?”

And if I’m calling myself normal, then it’s probably what I think everyone else should aspire to be. The ideal is somehow myself.

And it suggests that I’ve figured out a lot or I have fewer needs than other people.

It’s impossible to identify with the poor and needy if I’m not poor and needy.

It’s impossible to extend grace if I don’t feel that I need it, and if I’m not in an ongoing process of receiving grace from God.

I’ll never be able to accept the beauty in all creation as long as I have an overstated, exaggerated view of my own beauty. I will never value the beauty of God’s very personal creation as long as I’m trying to conform it to myself. If I do, I’ve misunderstood God as Creator and my place here if I’m trying to create people in my own image.

It shows that I’ve failed to seek God to know His vastness, beauty, and peculiarities if I can’t see how others reflect – in a different kind of way – the image of God.

When I truly understand:
my own brokenness
My own weirdness

And God’s value, worth, acceptance, and love from me that embraces me despite AND because of it, then I’ll be unable to look at anyone in the world and not see value and worth.

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