Contemplating We are Imago Dei

Gracious God, You shaped humanity from dust and breathed Your own image into our lungs — every last one of us. The same Imago Dei that marks the bishop marks the beggar. The same divine fingerprint rests on the refugee sleeping under a highway overpass and the executive sleeping in Egyptian cotton sheets.

Yet through the prophet Amos, You thundered what still shakes us awake: "Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." Not a trickle. Not a seasonal creek that dries up when the weather turns. A river — relentless, carving new channels through stone, refusing to stop until every valley is reached.

Martin Luther knew this. He insisted that faith without the neighbor is no faith at all. The Gospel doesn't just save us from something — it sends us toward someone. The woman at the food pantry counting cans of green beans at six in the morning. The father visiting his son behind plexiglass on a Saturday when he'd rather be anywhere else. The teacher staying late to tutor a child everyone else has written off.

Lord, open our eyes to Your image in the faces we'd rather look past. Make us uneasy with comfort that costs us nothing. Let Your justice run through our hands, our schedules, our checkbooks — not as obligation, but as overflow from hearts that have finally seen what You see when You look at Your children.