We’re so excited to kick off our Read Together plan today with a post from long time Word of Grace Member Jeff Gilbert. As we engage with the Word of God, we want this blog to become a place where we can interact and share thoughts and encouragement. So let’s kick this year off in style! Here goes…

I have a dog who will give me a look in certain times that makes me laugh. It happens in certain light, her head tilts a bit, she looks out of the corner of her eye and it makes me think she is thinking, “I’m with ya pal, these others don’t get you, but I do”. I have failed time and again to capture it with my camera. It’s frustrating that the camera and the eye are not seeing the same thing, the way the camera captures the image and how our brain interprets the now secondary image differs from how the brain processes what we see directly. Beyond that, even if I could capture a perfect image of what my eye saw, it would be frozen in time and to anyone else it would just be the face of a dog. My imagination has overlaid a humorous expression to an animal that is probably just looking to get a scratch behind the ear.

Gen 1:26-27 (NIV)
26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” 27 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

Unfortunately it is easy to slip into the idea that being in God’s image we are little gods in our own right. In fact that was mankind’s first temptation.

Genesis 3:4-5 (NIV)
4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Much like a photo, a painting of a person can be created that can evoke many aspects of that person. It may allow us to see the sparkle in the eyes, the express joy or peace they exhibit. However, no matter how good the painting, we know that the image is not the whole person. We cannot look at the image and think it is more fully the person then the actual person. Even with the best paint money can buy, brushes made from the finest hair, a lifetime learning the mastery of painting skills, years of work on the piece, and a lifetime of knowledge about the subject the artist still creates a painting. The painting could be a masterpiece that evokes emotion and captures our attention for hundreds of years, but it will never let us truly understand the totality of that person.

When God chose to create us in His image, He made us His masterpiece, and like a painting we are create to show some of the attributes of our Creator. We can, through the working of the Holy Spirit in our lives, express a limited version of God’s love, compassion, mercy and patience. Others can look at our faith and see glimmers of our Creator much like we can look upon a painting and see a stoic general with a command of his troops, or a mother full of material love and compassion for her family. Hopefully, I have captured some parts of God’s character that will, in certain light, with a tilt of the head, a look out of the corner of my eye you might think “God is with ya pal, He gets you”.

– Jeff Gilbert

If you haven’t been able to check it out, you can find the PDF Reading Guide and our Plan Page below.