Beholding the Glory We are Destined to Image

A Poetic Prayer on Beholding and Becoming Like Christ Jesus

Father in heaven,

Help me to still and slow before You as I meet You now in prayer, to unravel the knots between my head and heart from looking within and without. I meet You here asking You to use Your Word and Spirit to both inform me and form me more wholly to Your image.

Your image is one of purity and beauty, of wholeness and holiness, and I’m in awe. I crave You, Your nature, and to image Your likeness.

When I stand before the Word of God, it’s as if I stand captivated before a bust of fashioned marble and marvel at the intricacy, grandeur, splendor, and detail of Whom it points to. I am told that, behold, I am to bear this image. To image the reality and substance: Jesus Christ.

To be an image of God, a representative resembling His likeness.

Oh God! Looking within, I lament at the immense task for which I was created! Yet, innately I desire to assume it. Knowing my flesh and my sinful nature as a son of Adam, I fear the inevitable fall—echoing still from Eden to present—from so high a pedestal. If the task of Christlikeness were up to me to attain, I knowingly fear the certainty of my failure. For before the Beholder all my flaws are laid bare: the vast imperfections, even the polluted nature of the medium.

Yet…

Yet I have this hope. As I have been humbled to my knees, I see the beautiful feet of my Savior bearing good news. At the foot of the cross the humble of heart beholds her Hero! As my gaze meets my Maker’s eyes - Who is my Master - lo, I’m told that I am His masterpiece! He Who ascended the grave takes hold of my frame. He molds me with precision. His tools employed by His skillful hands, therein I’m enveloped.

The care and attention of El Roi’s eyes are upon me, envisioning me as I really am in Christ, as I will be in glory. My true self; one of God’s design already redeemed and presently being restored to glory. Delicately and deliberately, my form envisioned before Eden is restored - and being restored - as I bear my Maker’s mark.

My task is to believe this: that the unpleasantness and all that is unbecoming of me is literally un-becoming me!

As I behold, by God’s boundless grace, I become the truer and clearer spitting image of my Father. I am His child.

Alas, there is hope! This is the restoration of a lifetime—my life.

I stare in the mirror of God’s word - the medium that transforms me as a slab of marble is worked by the chisel and hammer in skillful hands - and I see the face of my God, Who smiles upon me. In Christ I have become and am becoming what I was made to be.

Degree by degree of glory.

Christ Himself will present me blameless, spotless.

God alone gives me dignity, beauty, and worth. He is my delight. He alone is worthy to be worshipped and praised. Amen.

“As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness;

when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness.”

- Psalm 17:15 ESV

What a promise! Continue meditating on this reality by reading Psalm 17, 2 Corinthians 3:18, and Romans 8:29.

Journeying with you, Lizzy Blanchard