Every Human Is Related to God
The triune God has from eternity related himself to every human as maker, brother, and breath.
Every human has their origin in God. It’s strange to have to say this but not every Christian believes or acts as if God is the creator of every person. Down the millennia since Genesis we have come up with provisos that sort certain or even most humans out of the Imago Dei.
Yet the oldest and wisest teachers of our tradition agree with John of Kronstadt: “Never confuse a person with his evil. The essence of a person is the image of God and this remains despite all disfigurement.”
Our Christian trust that God is the maker of every human inspires us to invite everyone to join Jesus in speaking to God as “Our Father.”
All humans are siblings of the human this Father calls “Son,” and because God is the Father of us all, as Paul everywhere teaches, Jesus is the human brother of every human. Do we always trust this?
The Spirit of the Father gives every human breath and sustains every human in life in every moment. Do we always hold this in our heart?
God is our Father and his Son is our brother and his Spirit is our breath—together one God. It would be good to simply sit with all of this, asking God to help us never to lose this awareness.
Participation in God is our essence as persons, whether we know it or not, if we are aware of it or not, if we feel it or not, if we act like it or not.
We might be in denial that God is our Father by the Son in the Spirit. We might be running from our relation to God. Some of us are hostile or indifferent or doubtful about it all but the relation is anyway indelible however far we have fallen or drifted from love.
No matter the distance our hearts and minds sail from God, God is our stowaway. No matter how far we fall, even if we make our bed in hell, God is there. When we reach the end of our fall, we land on the body of Jesus.
So again, the triune God has from eternity related himself to every human as maker, brother, and breath.
This is so before anyone shows up speaking or enacting the gospel. Christians need to remember something: we do not bring people to God, God is already with and in them.
Yet speaking and enacting the gospel is a vital human calling, helping all of us to see and hear, to touch and taste, to know and trust, and to follow and to love the triune God who always is for us.
The gospel of the cross is our freedom from sin and death, our liberation from captivity, our flight from attachments to evil, our redemption and restoration to what we always are in and to God.
Every person you meet today is related to God and loved by God but not every person knows this or lives this. We can join the human God in being their servants so they might know crucified love and live.
The ubiquity of God’s relation to every human is a compelling beauty, made possible by the Spirit who is everywhere and fills all things.
I hope every person comes to see themselves as infinitely loved by God from eternity, lose all fear they are not loved, and rest in trust that God’s love for them is ageless and greater than death, and they come to welcome his restorative judgment—now and in the end.
"No matter the distance our hearts and minds sail from God, God is our stowaway." Beautiful.
Truly you are a faithful scribe Father Kenneth. Blessings upon every heart that hears these words.