“But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 3:18, NKJV).

His tumor was in remission, so we spent most of our time chatting about life. His wife shared something she had learned recently. “You know, he never talks about himself, so even though we have been married 52 years, I’m always learning something new about him. The other day we passed a burgundy colored car. He spoke up and described how he had used a vacuum cleaner to spray paint a car that color when he was young. He reversed the motor in the vacuum cleaner so it would blow out instead of sucking in. He somehow figured out how to connect the blower to a nozzle to spray the car burgundy.” My friend just shrugged his shoulders and grinned.

I’ve always been a bit envious of men or women who could look at an object and fix it, or build it, or reconstruct it to be used in new ways. My wife has that ability, as does my son.

God is like that in glorious ways.

Somehow in our fall from grace, we were distorted to become creatures to suck life in, like this vacuum cleaner. Our natural, fallen selves are wired to take from the world, to seek good things for ourselves and possess them, to suck in all that our hearts long for.

The nature of God, on the other hand, is to love, and love is a verb, a verb that gives and pours out. Through God’s Word, He poured out creation; and the same love has poured out blessing upon blessing in my life, just as His blood poured out on the cross.

Each of us is created in the image of God, to be like Him in love. However, our fallen nature is much like a vacuum cleaner that seeks to suck in all that we desire—to own, to enjoy, to control.

If only there might be a brilliant Machinist who would take us apart and give us a new nature, a nature that pours out rather than draws in, one that renews within us the image of God, one that transforms us into people who love actively by emptying ourselves for the world and for our Creator. There is.

Dear Father,

Recreate me day my day into your image, so I might pour myself out in love.

Amen