in His image

 

I've been challenged to review my thinking patterns this week as I've been reading and listening to Colossians chapter 3.  Verse 1 in that chapter says, "set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor...".  Verse 2 reinforces this imperative with "Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth."  Verse 3 tells us the rationale for this focal point: "For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God."

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So I am amazed by this challenge: to focus my thinking on a place I've never been and can find relatively information about instead of the place I've spent my whole life, and where I will live until my dying day!

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But then I realize that in a spiritual sense I have died to that earthly dominated life already and was born a second time into the heavenly realm.  My feet touch the earth and my inner person...the everlasting person...already walks in heaven.  The life which was given me through the gift of faith continues as a walk of trusting in the invisible one who made that personal gift and the foundational gift of His Son to open that opportunity for heavenly citizenship.

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Along the lines of 'thinking about heaven' I considered the fact that man was made in the image of God.  I have always thought that God did this to show how special man is and how we have a family relationship with Him...and I continue to believe this.  But it also occurred to me that it is far easier for me to picture God being something similar to myself so that I can relate to a God who has important human-familiar characteristics: He hears with intelligence.  He sees with eyes of understanding.  He laughs with humor.  He cries with pain and suffering.  He walks...He runs...He is a God who is also a person that I can picture, relate to and know...something like I know my closest of friends.  We are made in His image that we might be drawn to relate to Him...truly know Him...and come to Him in our cries, joys, questions, frustrations...with the everything of our experience of living.

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Verse 10 of Colossians 3 puts it this way: "Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him."

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blessings,

Rob Smith