Episode Details

Prayer

My gracious Master and my God, assist me to proclaim the glories and majesty of your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Lord, this world is full of such rebellion as defies understanding. My own heart, redeemed and daily washed though it be, yet remains a labyrinth of twisted thoughts, affections, and motivations. Without you, I am altogether lost. O Lord, please meet me once again and pour out your mercies upon me. Please lead me in the way everlasting. Please forgive my sins, as I have forgiven those who sin against me. My need is great, and even desperate. I am a man of unclean lips. Create in me a clean heart, O God. And renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence, O Lord. Take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me, the joy of your salvation, and renew a right spirit within me. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will turn back to you. Save me from the guilt upon me Lord, who saves me. Lord, do not despise my prayer, but hear and answer for Jesus’ sake. And please renew my mind, that I may serve you in humble and quiet sincerity all the days of my life. In Jesus’ name I pray, 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

When we talk about the image of God in man today, the obvious question that arises is: What happened? The world as we know it, as we consider the lives of ourselves and others, is a far cry from being in the original condition of our creation. If mankind is an image of God, then modern man would reveal a terrifying picture of who God is. If we today are a reflection of what God is, then one might be forgiven for thinking that God is selfish, spiteful, cruel, divisive, violent, abusive, and crude. In fact, when you look at the Greek pantheon of gods in mythology, that’s exactly what you find. But the problem with that is it’s god in the image of man, not man in the image of God. Zues and all the rest are nothing but fictional projections of the fallen human condition.

None of this answers our question, though, does it? What went wrong? If we were made in the image of God – and we were – why has that image been so horribly disfigured? According to scripture, mankind is now a broken image, one that falls short of the glory of God. If the image of God in man was a mirror, then perhaps we could say that a cricket ball has hi