Please read Genesis 1:1-2:4a. How did God create us?
Our scripture lesson for today says that God spoke us into being. With voice, God created us in God’s image. There’s power in words! God imagined us into being.
What does imagine mean? To imagine means to form a mental image. An image is a picture or an imitation. God created us to be an imitation of God. God created us to be a representation of God. God thought us into being, spoke us into being, imagined us. We are a picture of God. You and I look like God. Imagine that!
I love pottery. When I go to arts and crafts fairs, I seek out the potters, and I like to watch them create. Mary recognized how much I like pottery, so one year, she got me lessons in making pottery up at the Museum of Art. I have some cracked earthen vessels to prove it. Maybe someday I’ll take some more lessons.
When you make pottery, you take a lump of clay. Just plain, brownish gray dirt. Nothing special.
The first thing you have to do is called “wedging.” You mix it, knead it, beat it on the table to get all the air bubbles out and make the mixture consistent throughout. Then you throw it on a wheel. That’s what it is called. “You throw a pot.” Creating is tough work. Especially on the clay that gets wedged, thrown, and fired in a kiln.
But when it is finished, it is a beautiful work of art.
The artist will have an image of what it is that she wants to create, and she has the gift to use her wet hands and form the spinning clay into that image. But if you inspect pottery, you will almost always find “imperfections.” Hand-thrown pottery probably hardly ever matches exactly what the artist had in mind. There are variables in the clay, in the speed of the wheel, the pressure of the hand, the glaze, the heat from the kiln…but still, the vessel is useful.
We are compared in scripture to clay in God’s hands, and God is the potter. God has an image for us to live up to. Think about that. We are imagined by God. Created in God’s image.
Do you live the life that God imagined for you?
Jeff Taylor
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