I’ve been blessed recently through this book and would like to bring this blessing to you! I’ll post what I read every day (or at least try to), and we’ll see if it gets your gears going.
Day One: Made in God’s Image
Then God Said, “Let Us make man in Our image.”
—Genesis 1:26
“Imagine God’s creativity. Of all we don’t know about the creation, there is one thing we do know — he did it with a smile. He must’ve had a blast. Painting the stripes on the zebra, hanging the stars in the sky, putting the gold in the sunset. What creativity! Stretching the neck of the giraffe, putting the flutter in the mockingbird’s wings, planting the giggle in the hyena.
What a time he had. Like a whistling carpenter in his workshop, he loved every bit. He poured himself into the work. So intent was his creativity that he took a day off at the end of the week just to rest.
And then, as a finale to a brilliant performance, he made man. With his typical creative flair, he began with a useless mound of dirt and ended up with an invaluable species called a human. A human who had the unique honor to bear the stamp, ‘In this Image.’”
When I read this it really brought to light how much thought God put into His creation. Not just us - but everything. Some people say, “God breathes out stars.” They say this to emphasise how easy it is for Him to create even the most marvelous things - mountains, sunsets, stars, galaxies.
Just as easily as we exhale, God creates. However, while it was easy for God to create everything on this world and around it, when we hear so many times, “God breathes out stars,” we may begin to forget the complexity of God’s creating. Breathing: inhaling and exhaling; an involuntary action. Involuntary: not subject to the control of one’s will. When people say that God breathes out stars, it makes it sound so easy for God - and so thoughtless.
We must take a look at how God did not just thoughtlessly manufacture us (or breathe us out), and I think Max Lucado did an excellent job at that. God put so much thought into all that he made. For example, He probably thought of me and you while he was creating the earth. He probably thought, “I’m going to take this dirt and shape it into a beautiful being. Then I’ll take one of his bones, and turn it into another beautiful being. Male and female, they will be in Our image. The two shall be one with each other and with Us. And they will bring these wonderful people into the world:…” And I’ll bet He thought of every person that would ever come into existance, right then. He thought of what they would be like; if they would be funny, or smart, or intreverted or not. What they would be like if they chose Him, what they would be like if they didn’t. He thought of them. And loved them.
