The sense I get when I read the first chapters of Genesis - where the world and humanity, unfolds in the Creator's hands is that we, male and female are lovingly and tenderly made. Our action and intention perpetuated by the breath of God, pulsating with purpose to move and to think and to speak - to tend and to help. God made, him and her, human, in Him - in His image.
Tonight's spooky incident was the apex of a train of thinking I've been on lately.
While I walking home alone in the dark this evening, some guy ran at me - his face masked with paint, and scared the crap out of me. He used words to intimidate me, and I was alone. His friends got a laugh, and I cried - in the wake of the misapplication of human influence.
I felt similarly a few weeks ago, when I held the bleeding face of a man who had just been mugged - beaten with a rock in the face until he let go of his laptop. Brother broken on pavement, for a piece of plastic that will be obsolete in a matter of years or months.
How we can so easily make priorities out of `things, and miss the 'apple of Christ's' eye in the meantime.
How simply we can act upon our propensity to deny God's image in the people beside us.
How easily we can rape.
You know, sometimes I think I should just buck up and trust less. Laying bricks of fear and bitterness feels safer, definitely easier than vulnerability. It is less emotional than rending the soul before God in brokenheaertedness over sin and pain.
But it`s a lie to merit myself alone above creeps in dark streets - to judge for myself alone, another adequate or inadequate of Christ`s unmerrited compassion and grace through, the betterness of what I do with my time or days.
Without God, I`m not far off being a creep in a dark corner, really - from using the intent of my pulse for my own ends, to wield my influence in pride, insecurity, lust or anger. Maybe somethings don`t seem immediately negative or innately wrong, but over time they impact the heart -
and change the rhythym.
In the Creation story, we're given a pulse, human impulse and influence - things we do every day:
naming - using language, defining, refining, proposing, sharing, describing; and
tending: to work, to school, to children, to relationships, to gardens, to our hair, to our dishes and vacuuming. We`ve all got that common rhythm, that intent to process and do - to eat and to live.
In relationship with God, naming is full and good - a work of shaping and affirmation of `being` that He has created. Tending with Him through Jesus Christ, is a work of justice that flows from value beginning with Him.
