When we Serve Someone we Serve another who Images God

When we serve another person, we serve one who also Images God.  To serve another requires us to do it with humility, with honor, and with love and grace.

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux wrote, regarding humanity made in the image of God, that while our imaging may be tarnished and corrupted by sin, it is not destroyed.  Christ's incarnation as human, and willingness to be like us (sleep, eat, play) but for Christ (the perfect and sinless God-man) to redeem and rescue humanity, demonstrates God love for humanity and the whole of creation.  Matter matters to God-- He, being God becomes flesh.  More, the Resurrection, and our future resurrection, directly opposes the false belief of us dying and going to Heaven.  We don't go to "heaven" (maybe temporarily) but it isn't where we dwell eternally.   There is a new (renewed) Heaven and new Earth.  The New Jerusalem (a city!) comes down to earth.   

This has profound implications in how we treat each other, and how we care for the marginalized, the elderly, the ill, the orphans, and others.  Importantly, when we embrace each other as one who is made in the image of God, we are to value everyone that we encounter each day as God values them.     

I am reminded of this when my Indian friends greet me.  "Namaste": meaning, to see God's image in the other person.  Let us serve and love each other with Namaste.  

To be made in the Image of God (imago Dei) is to Reflect

After the six days of creation, God creates humanity.  In Genesis 1:27, we are told that God created humanity in His image (imago Dei)-male and female He created them.   To be made in God's image has several implications.  

We are to be like God in that we share in the like-ability to create and design, the like-ability to order, and to multiply and grow. We are also made to reflect God back to God, reflect His image to the rest of humanity, and to reflect His image into creation. 

We are neither created to reflect ourselves nor are we created to reflect or do the work of creating and ordering alone without God--That was the Fall.  Neither do we reflect God's image only as men or women only; It is only when all humanity as men and women coming together in co-partners and in participation with the Creator, do we image our Creator.  

Today because of Christ, we are reconciled with God.  We join in union and participation with the Godhead in His redemptive and trans-formative work.  We are empowered by the Holy Spirit.  We build for the kingdom! We build together. Our work matters to God and has eternal significance because we are made in the image of God.