Genesis 1:26-27 and Genesis 2:4b-7
“So God created man in his own image…”
These are the two stories in the Bible of God’s creation of human beings. Both are so insightful. I love them both for different reasons. The first tells us we are created in the image of God. We would later find out, in John’s first letter, that image is love. The second tells us that we come alive when given the breath (spirit) of God. It is the spirit of God that makes us living beings. These verses ingeniously show us the paradox of being human. As Jesus said, it is the last that will be first and the first last and it is the one who is willing to lose his life who will find it. Whenever we live counter to God’s life-giving love, we are, as my mother used to say, “...cutting off our nose to spite our face.”