My oldest son usually has to drive to Buffalo every other week or so and we feel the grief long after headlines move on.

Our youngest daughter is of a different ethnicity and race. Her mother gave her life, when she might not have, and there isn’t a day that goes by, especially now, that we don’t give thanks.

Seven children, and their parents, from Syria and Namibia, live safe here these days because Christ made a way for us as a family to be part of welcoming and supporting fleeing refugees.

When anyone forgets that every single one of us bear the image of God, we all bear unimaginable pain.

Our family has faced the traumatic monster of sexual abuse in all kinds of scarring ways.

And it is happening right now all around, every single one of us: War rages across our screens and down our streets and across all our social media streams and across this spinning globe.

You and I can both feel it: Our chests can hardly bear all this heartbreak.

And the whole, holy thing is:

When anyone forgets that every single one of us bear the image of God, we all bear unimaginable pain.

When anyone makes anyone less of a human being, there’s more pain brought into the world.

When anyone thinks their rights overshadow anyone else’s, we all lose more of God and live in the ache of shadows.

All kinds of life is taken anywhere we take
the face of God in anyone
in vain.

This is what we were made for, this is the purpose of being human:

Every human being’s true vocation is to truly bear the image of God.

Every human being’s vocation, is to be God’s reflection.

Our very vocation in the world,

is to rightly bear the image of God to the world

to embody our intimate connection to God,

and to be a faithful reflection of God.

And sin is what happens when we miss the mark in reflecting God’s image to the world, but instead reflect the image of our own idols. “The normal Greek word for ‘sin,’ namely hamartia, means ‘missing the mark‘: shooting at a target and failing to hit it,” writes N.T. Wright, “Humans have turned their vocation upside down, giving… allegiance to to forces and powers within creation itself. The name for this is idolatry.”

Our very vocation in the world, is to rightly bear the image of God to the world — to embody our intimate connection to God, and to be a faithful reflection of God.

But when humanity turns for a closer connection to anything of this world, we break our reflection of God in this world — and this is idolatry.

Images reflect what they are the image of. Human beings’ purpose in the world is to be image bearers of God, made to the reflect the image of God.

But too often we turn away from God, and orient toward other images instead — self, ease, power, status — and become a reflection of all of those heartbreaking complications.

We become a reflection of our heart’s connections.

We become a reflection of our heart’s connections.

And it turns out? When we try to make God in our image, instead of actually bearing God’s image, we make more of this world hard to bear, and our hearts can’t bear it and break.

While our sinful idolatry deeply mars humanity’s vocation to be faithful image bearers of God, the truth of God’s intentions remains: Every human being is made in the image of God. So we can remain in hope. So we slay our idols, so we don’t slay each others in all kinds of ways.

When I meet the delivery person at the door, when I walk through the grocery store, when I sit at the lights and watch people walk across the street, I look into faces and practice saying it to myself as I look into eyes: Image of God.  Imago Dei. 

The face across from ours, that looks a world of difference than ours, bears the image of God,

That activist with a megaphone, bears the image of God,

That commenter with a bunch of barbs, bears the image of God,

That family with the thick accents and different scents in the kitchen, bears the image of God,

That woman with a placard and a story, bears the image of God,

That person who speaks in ways that are hard for you to understand, bears the image of God,

That movement in the womb, bears the image of God,

That body cut down in the streets behind the tanks, or horrifically shot down behind a grocery cart, bears the image of almighty God on High.

Not one of us can afford to forget, and we have to do whatever it takes to remember

Our dehumanization of each other
is actually a desecration of God.

What absolutely changes everything,
is to see the face of God
in absolutely everyone.

The only way to actually live
is to treat everyone knowing that God actually died for them.

I tell myself this, and I lament and I grieve and I slay my idols and I show up to take action, to actually practice my faith.

The only way to actually live
is to treat everyone knowing that God actually died for them.

It takes practice & it’s how we practice our faith:

There is always grace to trace
the image of God in every face.

This is the only way to become truly, fully human.


If you’re seeking ways to practice your faith, a SACRED way of life, a way to see God more clearly – can we invite you?

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It’s when you give your whole self to the Way Himself that you know there’s going to be a way through.

Join me for the WayMaker free online Bible study with my friends at FaithGateway, where we’ll dive into each letter of the SACRED habit and see how the WayMaker is not a far way off, but He is here, right here. Will you join me on this journey?

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