Episode Details

Prayer

Heavenly Father, I thank and praise you for this new day of life. I do not deserve the least of your kindnesses and benefits, and yet day after day your mercies are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. Lord, as you have in your faithfulness sustained my physical life, I pray and ask that you may renew and sustain my spiritual life this morning. As I read your word, please open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law. I’m a stranger on earth, do not hide your commandments from me; and my soul breaks with longing for your law at all times. Be merciful to me, O Lord, speak, wash me by the renewing of the water of your word. I pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Reading

Gen 1:24-31.

“And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. 25. And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 26. Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

28. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29. And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. 30. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.”

Meditation

As young people near the end of their first stage in their education, a common question that they might get asked is: “So, what are you going to do next?” I remember asking the same question of myself at that time, and – to be absolutely honest – I had no clear idea or direction for my life at that point. I find a similar situation when I talk to many young people today. Not many have a clear idea of where they are going and what they want to do. I’ve asked that question of High School students before: “What do you want to do after year 12?” And the answer of many is a reflection of the same answer that I gave: “I don’t know.”

Now many cultures, I’m sure, aren’t like this. Even in western culture fifty years ago, young people wouldn’t have been focusing on this kind of question. On the Saturday morning after my dad finished high school he started his plastering apprenticeship. In some Asian cultures, your options for a vocation can be determined as early as primary school depending on what grades you get. But just the same, the overarching question is still there: What should we do with our lives? What is your purpose? As we approach the close of our consideration of the image of God in man, these are relevant questions, because the fact is that there truly is a reason why you exist. There is purpose and direction to be found in this world.

As we’ve studied day six, we’ve seen a number of things. We’ve seen that the image of God is our total identity as people. It’s not so much that we carry or bear the image of God, but rather that we are the image of God. Everything that we are is reflective of something in God