Day Two

Genesis 1:27 

When I was a kid, there was a picture hanging in my house of my dad and his brothers. It was black and white so I knew it wasn’t from my childhood, and yet every time I looked at it, I recognized the kid in the photo. I recognized the kid because next to that photo was a photo from my own childhood, and I knew then what everyone else knew—I was the spitting image of my father.

To be the image of someone is language that we understand because we know what it’s like to hold up a newborn and compare all of her features to her parents and grandparents. We see the actions of children and immediately say things like, “He got that from his father,” for better or worse. 

I believe the imago Dei is one of the deepest, most convicting, and most satisfying theologies in all of scripture. We as people share in the likeness of God and have the capacity to reflect Him, His characteristics, and show who God is to an unsuspecting world, and yet in sin we are not gods ourselves. We are but a muddled reflection of the one true God. 

As we anxiously await Christmas Day, we are reminded that we are image bearers of God, and we live into that image the most when we look to Jesus Christ, the perfect image of God, and learn what it means to live and act in the world in the way God would. 

Reflect today on what it looks like to follow Jesus this holiday season by asking God to help you live more fully in His image.