Keep Listening

Genesis 1:26-27 speaks of God creating humankind in the image of God. In other words, we carry around something that reminds God of God.

This is the self we are born with - but the world seems to do a work on us that causes us to lose sight of it. Life must be lived a certain way and the world seems to know what that should be. The story is: We need to finish our education and find a partner in life. We need to take a job and make a name for ourselves but only stay because we hope for a bigger and better job.

This is what the world has for us and since we feel the need to survive in it, we attempt to make ourselves into something that we hope the world will admire better than the selves we originally were.

This is the story of all our lives, or at least how – if we are not careful – live out our story. It is with a busyness that is concerned with the world’s watchful eye that our self, that was created with a reflection of God’s image, gets buried so deep that most of us end up hardly living out of it at all.

I believe that the secret for us and to life is to realize the image that bear’s God’s image is a wellspring of wisdom, strength and healing. It teaches us, guides us, corrects us, loves us and cares for us. To live with happiness inside ourselves is, in the long run, the best any of us can do for ourselves and for the people closest to us.

Frederick Buechner says:

Life batters and shapes us in all sorts of ways before it’s done, but those original selves which we were born with and which I believe we continue in some measure to be, no matter what, are selves which still echo with the holiness of their origin.


We must keep listening to that inner self. It truly is the presence of God. Pay attention to the things around you. Various things can make you fleetingly aware of it - beauty in nature, a work of art, a moment that apparently has nothing to do with your day but makes you stop and smile, rushing water over stones or just putting your feet up after a long day’s work. We are God’s. We bear God’s image.

I believe that what Genesis suggests is that this original self, with the print of God’s thumb still upon it, is the most essential part of why we are and is buried deep in all of us as a source of wisdom and strength and healing which we can draw upon or, with our terrible freedom, not draw upon as we choose.

That place deep within you is not for the world to control but for you to listen to – for it is the echo of God’s holiness. It is the thumbprint of God. It is the strength and healing of God on your life. It is leading you towards redemption and towards wholeness.

But you can only hear it if you keep listening.

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