Fearfully and Wonderfully MADE

Not that I would do it, but I have been known to jokiingly threaten my off-spring when they are doing something worthy of a certain string of words.  Perhaps you have also uttered them also.

"I brought you in to this world, and I can take you out."

The only thing funnier than this is when your off-spring does something heinous and it makes you think of the popular meme about wild animals eating their young.

Thankfully, God is not inclined to uttering idle threats.

Anyway, I read something the other day that I have been rolling around and around in my mind. It's basically the creation story and one component of it that is both obvious and easily missed. 

God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; 

male and female he created them. Genesis 1:27

I've been around long enough to know that repeated words matter. However, for as many times as I've read this story, it never once occurred to me until Hannah Anderson pointed it out in Humble Roots.

"...we must never forget that looking like God does not mean that we are God.

We are made in his image, but we are made nonetheless."

Understanding this truth and everything it implicates is not something we are going to wrap our heads around easily. But I want to challenge all of us to think about this and what it means when it comes to our position. And that is basically that we have none. We are created beings. We were created for a purpose and that purpose was never once meant to be determined by us or any other created being. 

Perhaps one of the reasons we struggle to find purpose is that we too easily forget that we were never supposed to be the ones who define it for ourselves. We create lists of activities and good things to do that are typically our ideas and wonder why we are stretched so thin. We follow prescribed formulas for spiritual growth but fail to consult the one who made us and knows what we need to flourish in the way he intended. And we compare what we have done or are planning on doing as some sort of litmus test to proving our worth when our Creator has already determined it.

My prayer is that we will take the time, perhaps tomorrow on what is our day of rest, to remember that it was created for us, and then spend some time seeking what it means that we are created by someone who loves us more than we will ever comprehend and knows us better than we will ever know ourselves.