Blog
Testimony
It’s amazing that we survive death.
So much of life should kill us –
heartache, grief, vulnerability, fatigue;
even birth should destroy us with pain
yet it doesn’t, and here we are.
Our hearts break, but no matter: we wake
every morning. Loss takes our breath away;
even so, our lungs inflate, deflate, inflate.
Storms knock us flat, tsunamis wash away
all that we’ve known, and yet: here we are.
It’s amazing that any of us survive
the daily death of disappointment, of dread,
of betrayal every time the world sells you out
for the cheap price of fear. But still:
you’ve loved today, haven’t you? So have I.
And if we know love – within ourselves and
throughout this fragile life; if by some miracle
we even hold the same love for more than a day;
are we not thriving richly against life’s odds?
Is not love a conjugation of life?
Love is the past progressive tense of death.
It is a testimony to life in the present perfect
and the assurance of the simple future.
And when we no longer survive death, as is certain,
the memory of love will remain life’s miracle.
Ungodly
I will call to mind the deeds of the Lord; I will meditate on all your work. – Psalm 77:11a & 12a (NRSV)
There’s a problem with being made in the image of God: it’s easy to acquire a God complex.
“I have the divine right to…” “I hold the indisputable position to…” “I have the sovereign authority to…” “I have the superior righteousness to…” Fill in the blank with any example from the news. The divine right to go to war. The indisputable position to rewrite history. The sovereign authority to withhold food. The superior righteousness to deny freedom.
After all, God went to war, biblically speaking. God instituted famines, subordinated the histories of other gods, captured cities and peoples and subjected them to God’s divine will. We who are made in the image of God can surely do the same.
Of course, we might prefer not to see ourselves in the image of a warring, petty God.
More appealing might be: I have the divine right to love. The indisputable position to care for creation. The sovereign authority to demand justice. The superior righteousness to believe I am one of the “good guys” in a world of “bad guys.” Still a God complex, albeit in the image of a magnanimous God.
(There’s also the less obvious God complex, which sounds like: I am forever wrong. I hold no significance. I cannot change. I am subject to the world’s whims. Still an immovable position that inflates self-perspective.)
Against any complex, the psalms remind us: Our works are not wonders for meditation. Our images are not the grace to which people turn. Our reputations are not the power by which earth trembles or waters part.
We are made in the image of God, yes. And we are not God, ever.
To confuse the two is ungodly.
Prayer: Call my mind to meditate on you, O God—morning, noon, and night.
cross-posted with the Daily Devotional (ucc.org)
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