Your real image

 So God created humankind in his image,
    in the image of God he created them; 
    male and female he created them.  
Genesis 1:27 New Revised Standard Version

Have you ever had concerns about your body image?  Or how about keeping up a professional image?  And what about concerns like what other people think about you - in other words, what image of you they hold in thought?

The first account of Genesis states that we are made in the image and likeness of God. 

That would seem to trump any other image we could come up for ourselves!   We  may be ready to accept the idea that God is the first and foremost Creator.  But how much of our Creator do we really know? And if we are indeed created in His/Her image and likeness, then how much do we truly know about our true image.

The first chapter in Genesis tells us that we were created in the image of God and that male and female were created at the same time.  God's work was complete and God concluded Her creation declaring it all very good.  God's work was completed. and God does not undo or redo Her work.

Think of ourselves now, being made in the image and likeness.  We are whole.  Male and female are equal.   We are not only good, but we are very good.  God was pleased with Her creation.  There is no undoing or redoing of who we are.

What a contrast to the image-making that can take up so much of our efforts.  Diets, make-up, self-help courses, even branding ourselves or trying on different personages via social media.  Any effort that starts from a basis of lack and then tries to fill that hole with our self-created attempts can be exhausting!

But to see ourselves as the image and likeness of God, of Love itself.  To know ourselves as starting from the basis of being complete and whole.  Satisfied.  From that basis, we are free to be creative, to be less fearful and less self-oriented.

In the days of kings and queens and as is recorded in Old Testament times, royalty used to have their images on coins and as statues placed around the kingdom as reminders to the people of who ruled them.  Taking this idea to the first chapter of Genesis, we see that God has created us in His image and likeness.  We are the likeness, the representatives of God.  We are reminders to one another that God is with us. We are the evidence of God.

Like the story of the little boy who was asked "How do you know that God is here?" His response: "I know God is here, because I am here."

Our world view shifts as we shift the very understanding of who we are - as it goes from a material and personal basis, to a spiritual and immortal basis.  A whole new world of possibilities open up before us, which before were buried as we were preoccupied trying to maintain an unsustainable view of oneself.

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Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.
                                                      -1 Corinthians 13:12  New Living Translation