The Image of God
I remember a catechism teacher telling us that God is pure spirit. He does not have a human form. Then she told us that we were made in the image of God. How can that be? Many of you are probably now thinking that we do have a spiritual component, a soul. Is that in the image of God? A spirit has no form, no hands, no eyes, no ears. They have no need of the senses we require to live each day.
Think of this, when you die, and we will assume go to heaven, you are a spirit. Without any of our senses, how will know one another? God has not made that known to us. We know Jesus took on a human form, but after the resurrection He did many things we humans cannot do. So, we should not assume we will have anything of a human body until the day of resurrection. This is all fascinating, and I hope you spend some time thinking about this, but the question is, are we made in the image of God?
I think we are but in a special way. Yesterday and today, we heard the creation story. God had a plan for each day, and everything was made according to His Word. Whatever God said it happened. We are like that. We like to have a plan. We like to keep things in order, understanding one person’s order may be chaos to another. In that sense, we are in the image of God.
Know what else? We like to create, too. We take what God has given us and we develop it into greater and better things to improve our life. As parents, we have always wanted things to be better for our children and so we have worked hard for that. God wants the same for all His children. He has provided prophets, teachers, the Bible, the Church, and many more for us to become people of God. Just like God’s process of creating, His creation never ends. We are part of that creation. That makes us also in the image of God. How will you take care of your soul today? How about loving your neighbor?
May the Lord bless you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen