Like or Love, Look or See, Be or Was

I am not quite sure when I realized I wasn’t good enough for something and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t do it but that realization keeps popping up again and again now. I can’t run anymore. I can’t read small letters. I can’t dunk. I can’t make people like me. I can’t sing. Try and make me a good singer. You can’t do it. We can train all you want and you can’t make me a runner. I am never going to dunk again despite your best efforts. You can though like me. Despite my temper, despite my difficulty expressing myself, despite my negativity and despite my opinions that rile you, you can like me.


I struggle with my insecurities, struggle with my inner demons, struggle with my ugly attitude and sinful habits but one thing I never struggle with…being someone God made. Regardless of how badly I botch my opportunities and wreck my relationships, you can still like me and I can still like you. It is funny, this matter of being made in God’s image. Even the worst of us has something of Jesus about him and only the devil doesn’t like that. I was thinking today about how much I wanted to be in the mountains, around wildflowers and babbling brooks and trembling aspens with a squirrel or two chattering about me and a stellar jay calling to me in the distance. Instead I was around people…people who gossip, people who snap, people who pay no attention to what I have to say, people who don’t think much of my best effort.

Name one person who isn’t broken over something, who isn’t locked up about something, who isn’t afraid to cry about something. Your list would be pretty short. How can you not like being with someone just like you…someone who wants to be loved, someone who wants to be encouraged, someone who wants to have another shot at getting things right? It is pretty cool to watch a hummingbird flutter among the jasmine, emerald green flashing in the mid-morning sunlight but it isn’t the best. The best is holding hands with someone in the image of God, laughing with someone in the image of God, crying with someone in the image of God, listening with all you’ve got to someone in the image of God. Funny but I have never lost sleep over a rainbow trout and never dreamt about lazy raindrops but I have been caught by the whirlwind of distorted love and fractured likes. My kids can make me furious and my wife steamed but when it comes to love, a glacier can’t hold a candle to them. The image of God gets distorted, badly distorted at times, but it is the best we see here about us. If I held the sparkle of my son’s fear in my hand as tightly as God holds mine, I would be a happier and more contented man. Like even for a moment the meanest of us and you have found a keyhole peeping into the most holy place.