Image

All my life I've been told I look just like my mother. This is a compliment to me because my mom is a wonderful, beautiful lady. Her image and mine are similar. It's a good thing I look like her because after I was born, the nurse brought my mom the wrong baby. My mom had to tell the nurse she had the wrong kid. If I didn't have her image, I may have ended up in another family......thank God she noticed this and they took the other baby back to the nursery and brought me back to her. :) Good thing I got my mom back that day too, cause I was such a "momma's baby" it was awful. I hung on her a lot and couldn't be out of her sight as a child, because I was too scared to be.....but that's another story. However, a few weeks ago, someone my dad knows told me he knew I was his kid cause I had the image of him. This man that told me this is only the second one all my life that said that....so I take that as a compliment as well cause my dad is an awesome guy!

Then, when my second baby was born, Zachary, he came out looking just like my husband. I had nothing to do with his appearance. I have laughed all these years at how he doesn't look anything like me, he's all his dad. Whenever you tell him that, he gets the biggest smile on his face. He is so proud to look like his dad. He and his dad share an incredible bond.....maybe it's because they share the same features? One time, a lady that knew my husband saw me and my kids out shopping once. Zach was about 7 years old. She raved at how much he looked like his dad. When we got to the car, my youngest boy, Nick, was sad. He wanted people to say that he looked like his dad as well, but that's just not the case with him. I felt bad for him because he was so little and didn't understand. I told him he would be alright......God made him to look like he was supposed to.....same as he did his brother.

This got me thinking. We may resemble one of our parents looks over the other, but what about personality traits or emotional traits? These we can share a likeness with one parent over the other as well. One parent may be really outgoing while the other is more reserved. A child may share in the likeness of that trait. God tells us in His Word that all of us are made in His image. What does this mean exactly? Well....to be an "exact" image of God is impossible. We can't be exactly 100% like our God, or He wouldn't be God.....if that makes sense.

While we don't look like God does, we share the image of our God in different ways....
- Of all of His creation, mankind is the only one with intelligence. Our God has magnificent intelligence and we could never share that kind of intelligence, but He has chosen to give us this ability and share in His image that way.
- We are also created as emotional people. We can love and we can hate. We can be angry and we can be happy. We can be mean and we can be kind. God gave us this ability to have emotions.
- We share the likeness of our God when we love others, have peace, can use good reasoning when making decisions for the kingdom, have joy, and holiness.
- We have a will to choose. God gives us His commandments. We can choose to follow them, or not. We have the will to choose to eat a steak dinner or a candy bar for supper. We have the will to choose where we will live. We have to choose to share Jesus with others or not.

We have a great God to follow. His image is ingrained in each of us and what an amazing blessing that is. To share these things with the God of the universe?  By sharing in His image, we can give Him the glory He so deserves. Living a holy life and being a representation of Jesus to a lost world is quite an honor, if you think about it. That ability isn't given to any other creation, only the one made in God's own image. WOW!!