Every Wednesday, I attend the middle and high school lunches to get to know more students. I always bring a bunch of chocolate because free food is what makes me cool, to them. I usually ask the students I know to share a verse if they want a piece of candy. This verse is one of the most common ones I hear, which is incredible because I wish I had known this verse earlier in my life. In middle school I remember a kid putting his hand around my arm to show others how skinny I was. That started a journey of me finding my worth through muscles and sports. I knew God was important, but where I saw my value coming from led to my time, effort, and passion to go toward those things before going to God. I let a mirror and a scale tell me how my day would be.
In college, it was not a simple “I have always been wrong about how I view myself” moment; rather, it was a slower transition of understanding that God just cared about our hearts. I began to understand that when I would compare myself to others, I was picking apart a magnificent painting in front of the artist. We were knit together in our mother’s wombs, which takes time, attention, and care. The first anti-slavery protest in America was done by Quakers because of two verses in the Bible. We are called to love our neighbor as ourselves and that we are all made in the image of God. Those two verses span thousands of years apart in the biblical narrative. In the middle of them, we get this verse in 1st Samuel that shows God has always operated that everyone is made magnificently in His image. The beautiful animals are vast and powerful, with all kinds of colors and shapes, but they are not made in the image of God. The angels are, beyond my understanding, cool and powerful, but they are not even made in the image of God.
You are made in the image of God. Just as the Holy Spirit led Samuel to look at the heart instead of the outward appearance, I believe the Holy Spirit calls us to continuously do this in our lives. Maybe we need to judge the appearances of strangers less, or maybe we need to be reminded that there is an artist who designed us and did not just leave us to survive but is still active in our lives.