Our Purpose

Posted on February 28, 2014 by Elizabeth

It is a question as old as humanity: Why are we on earth and what are we supposed to do while we are here?

Even the ancients spent time on this. The Bible tells us from the very beginning in Genesis about many who searched for and discovered their purposes: Jabal discovered how to raise livestock, Jubal developed different types of music, Tubal-Cain mastered metalworking.

These ancients figured out what to do while here on earth, but what about us? What is our role? Many answers can be found by gazing into the moment we were created.

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness…”

We have a dual role, we humans. A dual purpose, given to us by God Himself. Let us make. We are created, a part of God’s creation. In our image. We are God’s unique counterpart, His representatives here on earth.

Being made in God’s image brings with it certain responsibilities. The second part of Genesis 1.26 says that God decided we were to rule, to have dominion over, all living creatures.

David echoes this in Psalm 8 when he says that God crowned us with honor and made us rulers of all that God created.

This has, unfortunately, been used too often as an excuse to plunder the earth and destroy it. Instead, “as God’s image bearers…we are to be wise stewards of the earth, caring for it and protecting it in a way that reflects and embodies God’s rule over his creation.” ~ Resounding Truth by Jeremy Begbie

As God’s representatives, His image bearers, we also are to spread the knowledge of God and His love to the rest of the world. We are to work to speed up God’s future goal for creation, to bring healing, restoration, hope and peace to the world around us.

Israel was supposed to be a picture of this. Israel was called to be God’s people, accomplishing God’s purposes for humanity in and for the world. They had experienced God’s rescuing power and love and were intended to be His way of giving that love to the rest of the world.

Does that sound familiar, as though it were, perhaps, something we are supposed to do? I wonder what would have happened if Israel had obeyed. What would our world look like if they had acted as God’s representatives? This is a painful question because Israel’s purposes were but a shadow of our own.

What would our world look like if we were truly acting as God’s representative? What would our neighborhood, our community look like if we were caring for and protecting our world, if we were sharing God’s rescuing love with the people around us? Different?

Things have gone wrong and many live in alienation from one another and in purposeless and destructive living. We should want to be different. We should be reflecting the image of God to the piece of creation in which He has placed us.

Our second role from that moment of creation is our very creatureliness. “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness…”

We are created by God. Along with the trees, mountains, birds and sun, we ARE God’s creation. We humans, however, have a unique role that was given to us on behalf of all of creation. A role that only we can fulfill.

We are (as far as we know!) the only creatures who can love God in return. We are the only part of creation who can give voice to the wordless praise of all creation.

In the human being, creation finds a conscious answering voice, a mortal from the dust of the earth who can know and respond to God’s love as a creature, love God in return, and as a part of this response, voice creation’s praise. ~ Resounding Truth by Jeremy Begbie

This is a beautiful picture and a beautiful role. What grace that God entrusted this to us! And yet what tragedy that our role as worshiper in creation has twisted into worshiper of creation. Including worshiper of self. Just as we have twisted our role as God’s representative, we have twisted our role of offering worship on behalf of all creation.

However. (What a beautiful word is however!) God gave us grace through Christ.

Jesus. Man. God. A man who gave complete and un-distracted praise to God. A man who perfectly acted out God’s wise rule in the world.

He is creation’s worship to God ~ perfect praise from us to God, creation’s perfect voice. He is the image of God to us ~ perfect representation of God, being a wise steward of the earth He brought healing, restoration, hope and peace from God to earth.

Jesus helped and healed many people, like this. He made blind people see. He made deaf people hear. He made lame people walk. Jesus was making the sad things come untrue. He was mending God’s broken world. ~ Jesus Storybook Bible

The most exciting part of this news about Jesus? We are invited to join Him. What joy and grace! What a gift! By reflecting God’s image to the world around us, to the tiny piece of creation (human and non-human) in which God has placed us, we are voicing the praise of creation back to God.

What a beautiful circle. What beautiful purpose.

Art Credits: photo of bird in hand by SP Veres; Christ in the House of Martha and Mary by Johannes Vermeer

reworked and much edited from the archives

it’s a little funny to me that this blog is old enough to have archives

My Default

Posted on July 29, 2011 by Elizabeth

“Stop!” I yell. “Just stop it!”

My eldest runs sobbing down the hallway to her room, fleeing the unholy wrath of her mommy.

I watch her go. My head slumps and my heart breaks. I did it again.

Hurled anger at one of those I love most rather than gently bearing love.

Why do I do this? Why do I consistently make wrong choices? Why is it so hard to choose the right way?

How can I read God’s words of love to me, His child, and then turn around and choose to offer anger to my own children?

And it is a choice. Ann Voskamp, in One Thousand Gifts, says:

Do I really smother my own joy because I believe that anger achieves more than love? That Satan’s way is more powerful, more practical, more fulfilling in my daily life than Jesus’ way? Why else get angry? Isn’t it because I think complaining, exasperation, resentment will pound me up into the full life I really want?

I’m a curious learner and I want to know why.

Why does my nature seem stuck in a default of sin? Why am I so easily led into believing that Satan’s way is more fulfilling than Jesus’ way?

Why is it easier to believe Satan than God?

I ask our pastor and he points me to Romans 5:

Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned…

So because of Adam, I really do start life with a disadvantage, with a default of disobedience? How is this fair?

Again, Pastor, in his letter, offers a way to understand:

God chose Adam as our representative, just as we choose our representatives in government. Just as we are bound by what our congressmen sign in our names, so we are bound by what Adam did for all of humanity.

I stop reading. I am still not liking this. Did God choose poorly? I didn’t get to vote on who represented me in this matter of sin and death!

Reluctantly, I keep reading and Pastor points me to the rest of Romans 5:

…if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! … how much more will those who receive…the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ … so also through the obedience of the one man, the many will be made righteous.

how much more

through Jesus Christ

Yes, God chose Adam as our representative. For all I would like to blame him, I know that no other human would have done any better.
And God chose Jesus as our representative! We are not simply restored to our own faulty, pitiful righteousness, we are raised up to Christ’s righteousness!

What a gift. What grace.

When we say “yes” to Jesus, our old nature is gone and we are a new creation (2 Cor 5).

Why do I still find it difficult to obey? Why do I still choose anger rather than love?

Because I forget. I do not steep myself in Jesus. I do not surround myself with His words. I do not ask Him to change my heart.

I will continue to ask. I will find more ways to hide His words in my heart and let Him change me.

When I forget, I will ask again for grace.

I walk to her room and hold her close. I wipe away her tears and ask her to forgive me.

She nestles in close to my heart and I breathe thanks for this grace, this gift of a child who is able to offer God’s grace to a weak Mommy.

A mommy who chooses, at this moment, to offer words of love.

Source/credit for paintings: Creation of Adam by Michelangelo; Christ of Santa Maria sopra Minerva by Michelangelo

An Old Question

Posted on July 8, 2011 by Elizabeth

May we have another conversation?

How about an old question today?

A question as old as humanity.

What is my purpose?

Why am I on earth and what am I supposed to do while I am here?

The ancients spent time on this:

Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil.
~ Genesis 4.2

Adah gave birth to Jabal; he was the father of those who live in tents and raise livestock. ~ Genesis 4.20

His brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of all who play stringed instruments and pipes.
~ Genesis 4.21

Zillah also had a son, Tubal-Cain, who forged all kinds of tools out of bronze and iron. ~ Genesis 4.22

They figured out what to do while here on earth.

What about us? What about all of mankind as a whole?

This is what has been in my mind lately:

Perhaps we have a dual role, we humans. A dual purpose, given to us by God Himself.

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness… ~ Genesis 1.26

Let us make. We are created, a part of God’s creation.

In our image. We are God’s unique counterpart, His representatives here on earth.

Perhaps we could try to work through the idea of being God’s representative first?

Being made in God’s image brings with it certain responsibilities.

The second part of Genesis 1.26 says that God decided that we were to rule, have dominion over, all living creatures.

David echoes this in Psalm 8:

What is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet.

This has, unfortunately, been used too often as an excuse to plunder the earth and destroy it.

Instead, as Jeremy Begbie says in Resounding Truth:

as God’s image bearers, humans are to exercise God’s wise and loving rule within the world; to use more modern language, we are to be wise stewards of the earth, caring for it and protecting it in a way that reflects and embodies God’s rule over his creation.

We are also to spread God and His love to the rest of the world. We are to work to speed up God’s future goal for creation, to bring healing, restoration, hope and peace.

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. ~ II Corinthians 5.18-20

Israel was supposed to be a picture of this. Israel was called to be God’s people, accomplishing God’s purposes for humanity in and for the world. They had experienced God’s rescuing power and love and were to be His way of giving that love to the rest of the world.

I wonder what would have happened if Israel had obeyed. What would our world look like if they had acted as God’s representatives?

This is a painful question.

Israel’s purposes were but a shadow of our own.

He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, transitory though it was, will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious? If the ministry that brought condemnation was glorious, how much more glorious is the ministry that brings righteousness!
~ II Corinthians 3.6-9

What would our world look like if I were acting as God’s representative?

What would my neighborhood, my community look like if I were caring for and protecting our world, if I were sharing God’s rescuing love with the people around me?

I will confess. Different.

Things have gone wrong and many live in alienation from one another and in purposeless and destructive living. I want to be different. I want to live in the image of God.

We can only do small things. Being mindful of the way we treat our natural resources, sharing our garden and our baked goods with our neighbors, helping another child get the food, education and spiritual learning she needs…

I will continue to think through this, trying to imagine what it looks like to act in the image of God. Will you help me? What if we all made a small change or two? Perhaps our world would look different.

Come back next week? Bring your coffee and stay awhile. I enjoy talking over hard things with you. Even if we come to no conclusions, I think it is helpful and good. We can continue with the other side of this: being a part of God’s creation.