Made in God's Image

Once again, Robert Lupton completely blows me away. In this book, he shares in little vignettes how his experiences from inner city ministry completely exposed God's heart for the poor and transformed Him in the process. I've just begun this book, but I can barely put it down. Here's a chapter that will rub you in really good ways. I just had to share it.

THE IMAGE OF GOD
Behold, an infant. A normal man-child in most respects. A kind-natured child. A child with promise and potential.
Watch him as he enters a rancid, smoke-filled world that resounds with the shouts and crashes of parents in conflict. Listen to him as he begins to compete for affection and food, and finds both forms of nourishment in short supply. His cries and soon his words become demanding. He pushes and grasps for strong boundaries that will assure him he is safe and loved, but finds only weak indulgence. No clear limits. No consistent discipline. Just impulsive beatings and permissive disinterest from parents preoccupied with their own survival. He begins to question his own worth. School confirms his suspicions. He drops out. He roams the streets at will, disguising his fear as nonchalance.
Behold a young man. A kind-natured, strong, undisciplined young man. Watch him as he falls in love, marries, and starts a family of his own. See his dreams begin to crumble as he loses one job, then another. He is evicted from a string of dingy apartments. His neighbors and "friends" spread rumors of child abuse and deprivation. The county takes four of his children. His wife loses respect for him. He is falsely accused of beastiality, arrested, and thrown in jail. Watch now as inmates and officials violate him. Watch as the last glimmer of dignity is choked out.
Behold a man. A broken man, scarcely forty. Parents dead. Rejected by his family. He walks the streets alone, head bent, shoulders stooped, hair matted, teeth rotting, drool running down his unshaven chin. A kind-natured man now babbling foolishly a salad of loosely connected thoughts and phrases... He is prideless, worthless to his wife and children than the social worker that issues their food stamps.
Watch now as a miracle unfolds. A metamorphosis! The wind of the Spirit of God blows through and about Lester's life. A man made in the image of God and reduced to nearly animal form is slowly being restored. God begins to convince Lester that he has worth, that he is loved.
The message comes from many sources. A family who invites Lester and his family for a picnic. A businessman who continues to hire, fire, and rehire Lester on a job, insisting on a standard of responsible work yet holding on to Lester with firm love. People who notice and praise Lester when he is bathed, shaved, or wearing clean clothes. A person who accepts a gift from Lester without chiding him for "taking food out of his children's mouths." A minister who prays with Lester. A counselor who intervenes to cool flaring family tempers and helps Lester expose his festering hurt and anger to the sunlight of God's acceptance. The people of God, the Church, become actors in the unfolding drama of re-creation while the wind of the Spirit breathes in new life.
What potential is confined within this unattractive shell we know as Lester? Who knows save the Creator himself? But of this we are certain: when Lester prays or weeps with joy, when he caresses his baby boy, we see the image of God.


If we believe that each person is created in the Image of God, then it is the the ministry of the Church through the Holy Spirit to remind the poor of their dignity and their worth when the world reduces them to nothing.

For theirs is the kingdom.
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matt 5:3).