I can feel it. Feel the knot in my shoulders. Two knots most accurately. Tightening, shifting, working there way in. These knots are the physical manifestation of the emotional stresses I have gone through in the last month. The highs, the lows, the monotonous day to day, it’s all there. It is all in there. This tension is a reminder of the physicality of life. It brings with it a feeling of weakness, a small reminder of the limits my body has. A reminder that I am in fact mortal, I cannot do everything and that I do need help.
I need help and I am created in his image.
There are moments when I hate this free will thing. This idea that God has that we all make our own decisions and influence the path our lives will take. I wonder sometimes why God insists that we must all come to him or go from him. In a way this is good because faith is a choice, it is never forced on us. In this world of choices we are constantly influenced and impacted and surrounded by what is happening. We make choices for good and for evil. The church is filled with people who make good choices and bad. It’s hard to be true when we are choosing what it not true. It’s hard to be real when we are surrounded by that which is not real.
It can be hard to be real in a world that idolizes the unreal but I am real and I am created in his image.
I think this free will, this choice and direction that we are given is in large part what it means to have been created in God’s image. To created in God’s image is to be able to direct. To be created in God’s image is to be able to choose. To be created in God’s image is to not be a puppet but instead the director of your own play. To have the ability to make an impact on this earth, for good or evil. It’s being given the choice to choose who we will be. That choice, that freedom to express oneself comes at a price. If we are to reach out into the world and live for only our own comfort we have made a choice to do that at someone else’s expense. If we are to live for others we will ultimately at times experience pain and suffering. These choices we make are not easy. These choices we make are given from God as a gift, to help us realize and be aware of the life that we are living.
Awareness. Awareness and realization are two things that are given to us by a God who created us in his image. Choices. Choices and action are two things gifts from God that come from God himself. Each day through our actions and our choices, our awareness and realization we are moving towards God or moving away from God. Each day through these things we are helping to shape who we are to become. We are helping to be created. We have been given this choice, that ability to choose. With this choice comes responsibility. Responsibility to God, to the people around us, to ourselves. Can we live well in this world? How will our decisions impact others? Is life about only enjoyment or is it about fulfillment of a promise, a deep promise to God and to each other?
I have a choice as I am created in his image.
What I read about the church right now can be a scary a times. There are those who say if things do not change we will die. There are those who say we’ve got to turn back to our roots while others say we must look forward into the future. I wonder if at times we have missed the point. Perhaps instead of looking to ourselves, we should look to God. Maybe if we look to the one in whose image we were created we might get a sense of who we ought to be as people. We we look to the one who created us we might get a sense of what it is he was creating.
I have realized that I need help. I am a real person living in this world trying to discover who I am and who God wants me to be. I am aware of many failures and have focused on them for too long. It is time perhaps to focus on the one whom I worship instead of the institution I worship within. It is time to embrace that spirit, that energy that courses through my life. It is time to be. To exist. To remember that I am created in his image, that we are all created in his image. Created to be, to live, to love. Created to serve, to share, to grow. Created for relationship with God and one another. Created to be present, mindful and just.
Created in his image comes with a lot of baggage. Am I willing to take that on? To take on the life change that will come from accepting life has a great meaning than we could ever possibly know? Will I become who I was created to be? Am I brave enough to believe I was created in his image?