Loss Of Dignity

"When God disappears, men and women do not become greater; indeed they lose the divine dignity, their faces lose God's splendor. In the end, they turn out to be merely products of a blind evolution and, as such, can be used and abused. This is precisely what the experience of our epoch has confirmed for us."

          --Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI

Beautiful Redefined

From: The Gospel Coalition

Trash To Treasure

If we as humans can restore old furniture and make it beautiful, should we wonder what God can do to a soul that feels like unworthy trash? From an article in Charisma by Bek Curtis:

....While spending the last hour starting the process of "up-cycling" a gorgeous timber children's chair that I "rescued" from a council clean-up, I have pondered why someone would throw away something so precious? As I've sanded off the dodgy lacquer and stain and applied the first coat of new paint, I was reminded of something: If I look at trash and I see beauty, how much more does God look at His astounding creation and see the royalty He intended?

If I, through sanding back and painting over what others have deemed as trash, and draw out of it beauty and charm, how much more can God draw out of us the beauty that has been cast aside and covered up or even completely discarded as trash? Not only does He draw out, enhance and perfect that beauty, He makes an entirely new creation in the process!

If you are feeling "trashed," cast aside, roughed up, forgotten or left by the curb, there is no better place to run than into the arms of your Heavenly Father! His sanding is gentle. His brush strokes are light. He already sees you as a finished product. He sees beauty. YOU are HIS TREASURE.

God’s Image and Purpose for Humanity

Quotes on God’s Image and Purpose for Humanity  from The Gospel Project – Fall 2013, “Bearing God’s Image” by way of Kingdom People: 

“The most distinctive feature of the biblical understanding of man is the teaching that man has been created in the image of God.”- Anthony Hoekema

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit.”- C. S. Lewis

“To live was to enjoy – when every faculty was in its perfection, amidst abundance of objects which infinite wisdom had purposely suited to it… when he was at full liberty to enjoy either the Creator or the creation – to indulge in rivers of pleasure, ever new, ever pure, from any mixture of pain.”- John Wesley

“Leave the works in one class. Consider one as good as another. Fear God, and be just, as has been said. And then do whatever comes before you. This way all will be well done even though it is no more than loading manure or driving a mule.”- Martin Luther

“The great God of the universe who heaped up the mountains, scooped out the oceans, and flung out the stars wants to have a relationship with you.”- Adrian Rogers

“This sense of being made in God’s image calls us all constantly to look for it in others and to do what we can to help them acknowledge it and to realize it by joining in worship. We thereby carry to others the answer to their inmost longing, a yearning for union with the Trinity, a thirst to respond with adoration to the God who made them.”- Marva Dawn

We All Wear Crowns of Tragic Splendor

This weekend the people of England celebrated the Silver Anniversary (60 Years) of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain. She became queen at the age of 25 back in 1953. Below is something that C.S. Lewis wrote in a letter (Letters, 3:343) to a friend at that time about the 1953 coronation, something that has a relevance for all Christians.

You know, over here people did not get that fairy-tale feeling about the coronation. What impressed most who saw it was the fact that the Queen herself appeared to be quite overwhelmed by the sacramental side of it. Hence, in the spectators, a feeling of (one hardly knows how to describe it) — awe — pity — pathos — mystery.

The pressing of that huge, heavy crown on that small, young head becomes a sort of symbol of the situation of humanity itself: humanity called by God to be His vice-regent and high priest on earth, yet feeling so inadequate. As if He said, ‘In my inexorable love I shall lay upon the dust that you are glories and dangers and responsibilities beyond your understanding.’

Do you see what I mean? One has missed the whole point unless one feels that we have all been crowned and that coronation is somehow, if splendid, a tragic splendor.

Hat Tip: Desiring God

The Ground for Inherent Dignity

 "..you have great dignity as a human being, not primarily because of your own goodness but because you are made of the kind of stuff that is capable of making God's much greater goodness visible to others. This is the bedrock upon which the enduring dignity of every person is established - no matter how sinful, abused, impaired, or oppressed. Male and female from the womb, every race - we are all created in his image and likeness."

 Mike Wilkerson, Redemption: Freed by Jesus from the Idols We Worship and the Wounds We Carry, page 29

Meeting Potential Kings & Queens of the Cosmos

"If the kingdom is what Jesus says it is, then that means what matters isn't just what we neatly classify as spiritual. The natural world around us isn't just a temporary environment. It's part of our future inheritance in Christ. The underemployed hotel maids we walk past silently in the hallway aren't just potential objects of our charity; they are potential queens of the cosmos (James 2:5). Our jobs--whatever they might be--aren't accidental. The things we do to serve in our local churches aren't random. God is designing our lives--individually and congregationally--as internships for the eschaton. We're learning in little things how to be put in charge of great things (Matt. 25:14-23)."

--Russell Moore, 'Kingdom: Heaven after Earth, on Earth, or Something Else? in Don't Call it a Comeback (ed. Kevin DeYoung; Crossway, 2011), 125

Hat tip:  Strawberry-Rhubarb Theology: Internships for the Eschaton: