Made In His Image
By: Alysia McCord
It’s almost rodeo time in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The rodeo on the 4th of July is a huge community event in our area, and a particularly memorable one for me is the first one we attended after moving to South Dakota. This was also the first rodeo following many of the major COVID shutdowns.
I remember the shock to the senses of being gathered again in a large crowd, and the delight it was just to be together again. People crowded into a metal stadium clad in cowboy boots and hats with their tall cowboy boot-shaped ice-cold drinks. The rodeo announcer tried to engage the crowd by playing familiar music. I remember that one song he played was Jon Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ On a Prayer.” The moment ironically touched me deeply, because the announcer cut the music out and left us all to finish. Almost everyone knew the words and sang along together. In that moment, when the music was only our voices, I was impressed uniquely by what it meant to be not just Americans enjoying the freedom to gather in safety and enjoy fireworks to the background of American music, but humans, part of an interconnected beauty of community, raising voices that could not be bought or sold but could only be created by the skilled hand of an infinitely creative and skilled Creator. I could sense the divine imprint in the voices among me, and I savored the humanity of the moment, the joy of hearing a chorus of real live voices together again in one place.
I have told my students in the classroom that the beauty of poetry is a mark of the divine in the human spirit; the human who can create a poem, a song, or a story is reflective of the character of the Creator God who also gave men the ability to employ creativity. The sunset, newborn babies, and even the patterns of the leaves on a million trees are marks of his craftsmanship. So many parts of the human experience point us back to the character of the infinitely creative One!
Those of us who know His word know that the sense of awe His creation evokes in us should lead us to worship the Creator, not the creation. Millions on this earth, however, still do not know the True Creator; they have never read Romans 1 and still do not know the proper response that the Creator requires of us. Millions worship the creation, and they worship created things, bowing daily to idols made of gold, making offerings to the spirits supposedly inhabiting trees.
What does the Creator God require of us? Romans 1 makes it clear that because God’s divine attributes are revealed to us in the creation He has revealed to us, pieces of that creation, like the infinite diversity of each snowflake, the power of the hurricane, and the always distinct cry of each newborn should direct us to thank and glorify the One who made each of these things. One great act of worship on our part can be to glorify Him by telling those who share this world with us the truth about the One who made them. He has commissioned us, and sent ones filled with hearts of gratitude for the great gifts He has given in creation can make a difference as we share the joy of knowing Him with the world. Each one of us made in the image of God can recognize and respect that image that we see in those around us. If we love our neighbors as their Creator loves them, we will tell them the truth about Him, the truth than can lead to us all joining together in the chorus of celebrating our Creator for all eternity.