Friday, 21 May, 2004

The focus of these devotions is Walter Wink’s book “The Human Being.”



In a vision in Ezekiel there is something like a throne and seated above it was “something that seemed like a human form” (1:26).

And this is the revelation: God seems to be, as it were, human…

What does it mean to say that God is revealed as human? Why does God turn a humanlike face to Ezekiel? Perhaps because becoming human is the task that God has set for human beings. And human beings have only a vague idea what it means to be human. Humanity errs in believing that it is human. (…also…errs in believing it is divine!) We are only fragmentarily human, fleetingly human, brokenly human. We see glimpses of our humanness, we can dream of what a more humane existence and political order would be like, but we have not yet arrived at true humanness.



Our humanity is a gift of creativity. In the storytelling of Genesis, God draws human beings into the image of God’s self. As God has just created all things and it is all good, we are being shaped into beings that, like God – but not God, have a creativity about us that can bring the fullness and beauty and life sustaining order of creation with us into the movements of our humanity. But as we can all see, we are appear to be only a caricature of the glowing image of what it is to be truly human as created by God. I think our faithful imagination is part of the gift we are given to help us see the possibilities available to us as human beings. We are to imagine what it is to be – here and now – fully human. Imagination that tries to pull us away from here…may not be faithful at all…but it sure sells books.



Connection: We are a part of a wonderful image. We…not merely me…stand before God today and we are given the gift of the depth of grace and love and creativity that is a part of God’s being. How in the world will that move us today?



Lord of the Creation and Inspiring Breath of Life, lift us up to see the beauty of your creation and the gift you have given to us as we simply greet this day as part of a humanity shaped in your image. Continue to open our eyes to your will for us. Amen.