True power occurs when God is being glorified and the lowly are being delivered. Benji Davis
The best work is good work, done well. Dorothy Sayers
You are the sum total of your data. No man escapes that. Don Delillo
The Church needs to be just as interesting as the Marines. They need to be able to ask for sacrifice that makes sense. Stanley Hauerwas
Jesus likes to take advantage of reckless people. Will Willimon
We are called to make a place suitable for life and flourishing. It’s there in our DNA somehow. Genesis 1:28 gives us some more explicit guidelines for what we are supposed to do here. God tells us to be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the rest of creation. The fact that we are made imago dei gives me enough reasoning to believe that Adam and Eve didn’t need to know exactly what those words meant to act upon the command. Had I not known what the word “till” meant, upon being commanded to “till the earth” you may find me digging a hole and sticking my foot in it. Just to see what happens. The means may differ, but the results are the same. Do something with what you have been given. We are called to act. Farmers are not the only ones responsible for the carrying on of God’s work here (although Wendell Berry may disagree).
By telling us we hold God’s image, God is confirming that we are able to do so. When we bear something for someone, we are doing it in place of that being. We are given commands after we are told we were made in the image of God, because that fact in of itself propelled us forward in action. We are image bearers responsible for the manifestation of the creator in the world. We are able to keep God’s commands because we are made imago dei.
Recently I was on a run and was in awe of the sight of the city around sunset, as well as the weather above. I paused looking down Fayetteville Street and smiled. The storm clouds were rolling in right as some flurries of violet and crimson were hitting the face of the monumental moisture fields. While that sight alone has every Christian Instagram influencer losing their mind for a quick “God makes cool art” story. Nay, it was the combination of God’s work in the sky with the foreground of downtown Raleigh. We made this. Of course this is naive to think we alone made it happen, but I saw infrastructure, design, beauty, and craft looking down the street. Creation begets creation. In Dorothy Sayers’s book Mind of the Maker she seeks out the relationship between creativity within art and how it corresponds with the Trinity. Looking deeper into imago dei, we see, first and foremost, that God’s initial action is creating. We look to see what God is up to in order to find out how we can properly bear said image. Innately within us, we therefore have an urge to create, build, craft, etc. in this world.
This has a ton to do with vocation and the work we are involved in, but I’d like to end with a brief endeavor into what this speaks into about place-making. It is a creative act to even begin thinking of the implications of place. The question “What makes a place a home?” is an easy way to look at how we make meaningful places. If I had to answer that, home is where the people are. People I love, who love me. Those two create comfort. So within place-making, there is a call for community making as well.
I am constantly trying to “make this place my own” in the cities I live in. What makes Nashville the lovely place it is to me is the guys from The Big Shoe and The Love Shack, and the girls from The Swamp and Red House (respective names for houses full of folks near and dear to me). We lived with or in close proximity, which demanded to act on the desire of friendship, not expecting it to occur without said effort. The problem I face now is that I do not live with or relatively near the community handed to me. That I didn’t necessarily chose these people. That this program demands attention, energy, work, etc. that drifts into personal time or time that could be spent with folks. This demands a creative look to make sure folks are cared for, times are enjoyed, and that the space we hold with one another is blessed. In Raleigh, this looks like the gentlemen coming around a fire at Alex’s or Jack’s, bike rides through the city for our sporty folk, meeting for morning or evening beverages, and sometimes the occasional movie in a basement. Till the community, make it work. Allow it to flourish, diminish our natural hubris that got us here in the first place.
I am asking the Lord to bless my ability to act on the cultural mandate in Genesis. I fail on my own. Eventually I believe this will lead to tricking people into being in fellowship with myself, just by listening to the sometimes unnatural rhythms that come with being human in community. Be about the business of making place. Redeeming people. Redeeming place. Creatively working to restore the created order.
Peace,
Austin Spence