“Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness….’ So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:26-27, NIV).

I was talking to a friend after church, and she shared a story that carried me back to my medical mission days: “We took our family, including kids and grandkids, on a safari in Tanzania last month. The trip was wonderful. One of the good things was for them to see the poverty most of the world lives in. There’s one beautiful story I’ve got to share with you. We stopped in a village for a break—dirt floor poverty like you’ve never seen. One of our leaders had a soccer ball and rolled it to a 5-year-old boy from the village. That boy grinned ear to ear and laughed as he kicked it back and forth, never having had a ball of his own. Then one of our granddaughters walked over to watch him. The young boy picked up the ball and carried it to her, handing her the ball he had just been given, a gift from one who has nothing to one who has everything.” My mind immediately flashed back to a blind woman in Nigeria, wiping the dust off a plate, placing a dime on it, walking across a dirt floor and giving it to me, a visiting American doctor.

There is something remarkable about that boy in Tanzania, that woman in Nigeria and the heart of mankind in general. Why should people such as these give what they need badly to strangers with no other purpose than kindness?

At the beginning of his great work Mere Christianity, and probably at the beginning of his transformation from lost to found, C.S. Lewis describes a moral code that is written on the hearts of all men and women, with the only reasonable explanation being that it had been placed there by One outside of us.

I believe Lewis is right. None of us is good enough to approach the throne of God without the saving grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. However, I do believe we are all created in the image of God with His goodness a part of that image.

The point for me is that I need to honor God’s image in every person I meet or serve, even if their culture, religion or sin has dirtied its reflection. I need to focus my heart and mind on respecting God’s goodness within them, as I seek to work with the God who created them to help that goodness shine brightly through my own kindness, the wisdom of God’s Word and the transforming presence of Christ.

Dear Father,

Let me show more of you and let me see more of you in others.

Amen