Images

I was taking a group of young people home from youth group in my van a few weeks ago. They were all peering in silence into their phones until someone said “have you seen this?” They all huddled around an inch and a half screen laughing hysterically.  They shouted up to me, “Hey Bob have you seen such and such?” I had never heard of it, much less seen it. They went back to their giggling.  

In my generation, my family and sat laughing at images too. Ours were on a TV screen.  If you are 57 or older, no doubt you can remember “I Love Lucy” and the chocolate factory or Lucy selling Vitameatavegaim.  

The generation before me was bit scandalized by a movie image. Never mind the plot, the last line is “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a ….

You know the movie.

My dad told me about images of shows he enjoyed.  He had images in his mind as his family gathered around the radio after supper to listen to “Jack Armstrong, The All American Boy.” Amos and Andy wouldn’t make it in our politically correct society today, but was greatly enjoyed in my Dad’s household.  

Images were not only for entertainment. My Dad told me of newsreels before black and white movies that would show images of a war a world away but had involved the lives of every able bodied man in America.

The Bible talks about images too. The 2^nd commandment in the King James Version says that “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image…” (In other words don’t worship anything other than God.)

But our earliest mention of image comes in Genesis 1:27 (NIV) “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.”

I see what God looks like when I look into the face of a newborn baby; the freckled face boy on the playground, the new bride I am marrying on June 14^th, the homeless man on the park bench. Matthew 25 tells me that how I treat them is how I treat God. These are the images I will be accountable for on judgment day, and images that dictate how I act toward God and my fellow man.

Perhaps the better question is “What kind of an image do I portray each day?” With Christ, it should be a powerful image of God’s love, grace and compassion.”

With even more power than the Vitameatavegaim!