Certainly I recognize it in the breathtaking sunsets and brilliant fall colors of Virginia, the snow-capped mountains of Montana and the magnificent waterfalls of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. Scenes of such beauty in nature definitely call for offerings of praise to God.
Yet, none of those reaches the pinnacle of God's majesty in creation. That spot is reserved for every human being, because each of us -- and no other part of God's creation -- is made in His image (Genesis 1:26-27).
In my own life, I see or have seen the majesty of God in:
-- A girl born exceedingly prematurely resting in the hands of her mother as a monitor counted down her life in a neonatal unit.
-- A boy with Down syndrome in our special needs Sunday School class who called me "doofus."
-- Older African-American men who avoided raising their heads and looking at me after decades of having their "place" in the Jim Crow South hammered into them.
-- A young female friend of our family who is blind and mentally impaired.
-- A boy in our church who cannot speak or stand.
-- A woman in a nursing home who frequently told tales indicating her mind no longer functioned coherently.
-- A 96-year-old woman, my mother, who never responded as her family spoke tenderly to her and sang hymns around her bed in her final days.
And some I have been unable to see but I knew bore God's image in the womb of their mothers -- mothers who walked past my sidewalk vigil into a clinic and left childless.
Every human being I have ever encountered was an image bearer of God, and every person I see today or will see in the future is an image bearer of God -- even those who oppose the right to life of others. Some of these foes of life may even acknowledge the majesty of the Creator in the wonders of nature, but they are blind to His majesty in some of their fellow image bearers.
We, the people of God rescued by His Son who took on flesh and blood like us, are the ones who have the treasured privilege of testifying to this truth and demonstrating it in how we treat every other human being: Every human being -- no matter his or her age, ability, condition or ethnicity -- bears the image of God and should be treated with the dignity that truth requires.
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
