God created humanity in God’s own image,
        in the divine image God created them,
            male and female God created them. – Genesis 1:27

Today’s post is brought to you by Max, my huge “105 pounds of love” Golden Retriever. As of right now, a little after seven o’clock in the morning, he is sitting by the kitchen door, waiting for me to finish pouring my coffee so that he can stretch out under my feet. Max makes me smile.

Making us smile is essentially his number one job. That and lowering blood pressure. I don’t know if I have ever mentioned this before, but Max was specifically trained as a service/therapy dog back when he was a puppy, six years before we knew him.

This is one of the reasons he does not bark, he does not jump up, and he is such a deliberately calm presence. Being calm in order to help his people stay calm is both in his nature and in his training.

Nature or Learning?

“Both in his nature and in his training” is the phrase I think I will land on this morning. Max is “by nature” predisposed to all the great qualities we enjoy. But he has also been highly trained. There is no nature versus nurture either-or, it is “yes, and.”

This has huge implications for us as spiritual beings too. As a human I am created, the Bible teaches in Genesis 1, “in God’s own image.” That is my nature, my natural state. Saint Augustine, who cropped up in our morning devotions earlier in the month, put it this way in his Confessions: “You arouse us so that praising you may bring us joy, because you have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.“

It is our decision to put ourselves in a place of nurture that makes all the difference, a place of learning and practice and mutual encouragement.

Paul puts this as well as I have ever seen it in 2 Corinthians 3. The whole chapter is helpful but let me set up the key idea with a summary. Paul references the time Moses had to cover his face with a veil, because he has been with God and the residual glory is too much for the people. Forget a veil covering Moses, or even a curtain in front of the Holy of Holies, because of Jesus the Spirit of God gives us the freedom to be in the presence of the Holy!

And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. – 2 Corinthians 3:18

We nurture our calling to honor the image of God in us by spending time in the presence of Jesus. In fact, “we are being transformed into his image…” Paul writes.

I know that I belong to God, that much is baked in to my essential nature as a human being. But to nurture a relationship, and to live into all the peace and the purpose such a partnership makes possible, that requires my commitment and my will. And it is something none of us were ever intended to do alone.

Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on all of us – DEREK