The Images and Words of God

Christy over at dry bones dance posted a beautiful reflection on creation, God’s word, and our place in the world. You have to check it out! I’ve tossed a few excerpts on here, but you should really read the whole thing. It is one of the best "devotions" I have read in a long time.

Christy Said:

God spoke light and sky, land and sea into existence, so we walk and breathe and live and swim surrounded by the word of God, and we should read the planet like the Bible, hear the ocean like a voice from heaven, and look at trees like angelic visitations. The word of God is eagle and lion and chipmunk and octopus and cocker spaniel. God spoke strong and weak, beautiful and odd, huge and tiny. Every creature belongs somewhere – rivers or mountains or plains or sky – and is a syllable in the language of God.

The story of God asking Adam and Eve some hard questions is an archetype of all the ways we hide in the trees and blame each other for the sad sate of the world. Look at Adam – Eve sure went from “bone of my bone” to “this woman you gave me” in a hurry.

It didn’t get any better from there: Cain killed Abel, and we’ve been killing each other ever since. Sometimes we use guns; sometimes we use words. Either way, we aim for the heart. We all bear the mark of Cain somewhere on our skin. But there is this – the mark of Cain was a mark of protection, not a curse and not vengeance. It kept Cain alive. Cain’s punishment was to be driven from the land, to be a restless wanderer. He would no longer belong. We’ve been trying to find our way back home ever since. In a post-modern world, home lasts as long as a lease and is just the place you sleep between commutes. With globalization, everywhere starts to look a bit like everywhere else, so we feel like we’re always in the same place, but it’s never home. We know more about the personal lives of celebrities than we do about ourselves or our neighbors who live next door. Real people are a bit more challenging and tend not to have a publicist.

So we may not belong, but we are still alive. What would happen if we called each other “bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh” instead of all the other names we use? I think the practice of trying to see the fingerprint of God in the people we meet would change us. In spite of all our differences, we are all made of dirt and the breath of God. The breath of God in us makes us sacred; the dirt makes us mortals instead of angels.

The questioin you have to ask your self is this: Am I going to approach the world and everything in it as FALLEN, but created by God as good, or as CREATED BY GOD AS GOOD, but fallen?