Day 11 — Made in His Image

“When I behold Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have set in place—what is man that You are mindful of him, or the son of man that You care for him? You made him a little lower than the angels; You crowned him with glory and honor.”

— Psalm 8:3–5 (BSB)

Go somewhere dark one night, away from the streetlights, and look up. The longer you look, the more stars appear, and the smaller you start to feel. Some of that light left its star before your great-grandparents were born. You are one person on one planet, circling one ordinary star, in a galaxy of billions.

David felt exactly that. He looked up and asked the question every thinking person eventually asks: Why would the God who made all that pay attention to someone like me?

There are two easy answers, and both are wrong. One says you are nothing: a lucky arrangement of atoms, here for a while and then gone, so nothing you do really matters. The other says you are everything: the centre of your own story, free to define yourself however you like, answerable to nobody. Plenty of people swing between the two in a single week. On a good day you’re the main character; on a bad day you’re nobody.

The Bible gives a better answer, and it starts on the first page: “So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” To be made in God’s image means you were made to reflect Him: to think, to create, to love, to choose, to rule over the world with care, and above all to know Him. A mirror isn’t valuable because of what it is in itself. It’s valuable because of what it shows.

That changes how you see yourself. Your worth isn’t something you earn with marks, followers or a starting place on the team. It was given to you before you did anything at all. And because it was given, nobody can vote it away. Not the person who laughed at you, not the group chat that left you out, not even you on your worst day.

It also changes how you see everyone else. James points out how strange it is that “with it we curse men, who have been made in God’s likeness.” The classmate you find annoying, the refugee family down the road, the cleaner nobody greets: every one of them carries the image of God. You can’t honour God and treat His image with contempt.

The image has been damaged. Sin has scratched and cracked the mirror, and you know that from the inside. That’s why the New Testament speaks of being renewed into the likeness of Jesus, who is the perfect image of God. Becoming more like Him isn’t becoming less yourself. It’s becoming what you were made to be.

Sixteen centuries ago a restless young man in North Africa tried everything to fill the emptiness inside him. Later he prayed: “Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee.” You were made in God’s image, and for Him.

Think about it: Do you tend to think of yourself as “nothing” or as “everything”? What would change if you saw yourself as an image-bearer instead?

Try this: Pick one person today you usually overlook or find irritating. Remind yourself silently, made in God’s image, and treat them that way.

Go deeper: Confessions by Augustine — the most famous autobiography in Christian history opens with a young man discovering that his restlessness was really a hunger for God. Start with chapter 1, “Book I.”

Creator God, when I look at the size of everything You made, I wonder why You notice me. Thank You that You made me in Your image and gave me a worth no one can take away. Where sin has cracked that image, make me more like Jesus. Help me see that same image in every person I meet today. In Jesus’ name, Amen.