In the Image of God

When I was a child I had curly blond hair, blue eyes, and tan arms and legs. My husband had straight brown hair, a light smattering of freckles, and brown eyes. Our three boys are a mix of both of us, a genetic spreadsheet of our various characteristics, but looking at pictures of me as a young child and at pictures of my daughter you see almost a mirror image. Every family has funny stories about what is passed down along the generations: dimples, near-sightedness, red hair.We also inherit other traits from our families, such as musical ability, a love of reading or a passion for football. As we mature we are constantly being formed and reformed in the image of those who created us, raised us, and loved us.

Today I brought a picture of myself as a child and compared it to one of my children. Our lesson was that we are created not only in the image of our parents, but in the image of God. Being made in God's image has nothing to do with our messy hair or the color of our skin or our ability to sing on key. It is our soul that is created in God's image. And just as I have my grandmother's nose, I hope to have my Lord's heart.

What are you passing along to your children? While you have no control over whether they have your eyes, you can pass along a love of worship, a passion for service, and a heart for prayer.

Back to School

It has been a busy, dusty and chaotic summer around St. Mark's as the construction on our campus took place. My office window provided an unobstructed view of everything from bulldozers to cement mixers as the work crews scrambled to get everything ready for the start of school. On Sundays it has been fun to escort the children going to children's chapel to a spot where they could view the weekly progress and listen to what they noticed had changed from the previous week. And for those of us who work here the construction provided us with a new dress code of closed -shoes and hard hats if we needed to walk through any of the areas where demolition or construction was happening. Thus it seemed only fitting that I brought a hard-hat to the first week of chapel.

Our Bible begins with a construction story, that of God constructing the world. The Master Architect designed light and darkness, land and sea, sun and planets and filled our world with plants and animals of all kinds. And after each stage of the project was completed, God saw that it was good. I brought the hard hat to remind all of us that unlike the rest of creation, we are still under construction. We are created in God's image, but none of us is a completed project. Instead we must participate in our own development, and through prayer and study and action we should try to follow the blueprints that were written for us. Construction can be messy. It can cause headaches. Some mistakes are made, causing delays, and fixing those mistakes may take some time. Luckily God is with us, guiding us through each stage of development, loving us at all times.

Where are you in the construction process? Are you willing to endure some dust and debris in your life? How do we support our children, our families, our friends as their lives are constantly being constructed and reconstructed to be more like God? This week wear your hard hat with pride. God is at work in your life.