OTC Devotion: Fast Track Week 1, Day 1

I'm joining in the Old Testament Challenge by keeping in touch with all the messages and reading through the Fast Track in the Devotional Book. Since I'm already reading through Luke for my devotions, I thought the Fast Track was manageable.

The first Devotion has me in Genesis Chapter 1. As I was studying the passage, I read 1:26-27 where God gives humanity the blessing of bearing His image. It's a long discussion (couple of thousand years) as to what the "Image of God" exactly means. The realization struck me today that it provides the means by which we can relate to God. Without it, a relationship with God would be impossible.

Think of it, only humanity receives the image. Nothing else in all of creation gets the gift. Certainly, we know that creation reflects the character of God but we are unique in that we carry the image within us. Nothing in all of creation can have a relationship with God, only humanity. This image includes (among other things) the ability to socially connect with God. It's how God communicates with humans, gives them moral choices and responsibility, provides the means to find purpose.

This means that we hunger, somewhere within us, to know God. We are incomplete without the relationship for the image of God within us (broken though it may be) drives us to know Him. Religion isn't the vestige of our primitive nature, its the sophistication of our uniqueness. Nothing else in all creation strives for God. No other created being has a spiritual drive to know the divine.

What we do in and through FCCH is meant to help people find their completion, to become what they were created to be, to find fulfillment. We seek to give people the gift of a relationship with the one they were meant to know. That's why I love ministry.