This morning, it was the moon, so bright just above the thick-with-evergreens hill to the south. It seemed as though, if I were standing on top of that hill, I would be able to reach up and touch it. An involuntary “oh!” escaped from between my lips when I saw it. I have grown accustomed to seeing such delights, though they are no less wonderful for their frequency, since I started paying attention.
I see the Divine at every turn in this created world—in the turning of the seasons, in trees, and vegetables growing in the garden, even in persistent weeds that have no business there. I am not fanatical about eradicating them from my plot. My garden isn’t perfect. I don’t plan enough, weed enough, or cultivate enough, but I still see perfection in the imperfection.
Lately, I’ve been challenging myself. As an image-bearer of the Creator, I long held the unspoken (and ofttimes spoken) belief that with such wonder came great and heavy responsibility. To be more. To do more. And I always fell short. Over the years, my thinking has shifted. What I really need to do is learn to love God and people—and do it. Imperfectly, to be sure, but it’s really just as simple and complicated as that.
Pulling weeds and cultivating the metaphorical soil, all that’s important. Doing these things from a place of continual transformation into one who is learning to love, step by stumbling step, is far different than doing so from a legalistic, judgmental place of rules and laws. The challenge I set before myself is to look beyond the mystery and magic I see in creation, and look for it in people who bear the image of God’s hand upon them, and that’s all of them. This is more difficult, but it is exceedingly important.
As created beings, we are God’s image bearers. That isn’t a burden meant to drive me to do more and be better. It’s an invitation to look at the person in front of me and see that image, and love that image the way I’m able to in that moment. And to do it again and again, and learn to do it well according to how I was created, not to follow a formula or hit a mark someone else sets for me. Maybe one day that will be my default; for now, I practice.
This post is excerpted, in part, from my book, Living Liminal: A Slice of Pandemic Life, available in both print and ebook formats on Amazon.