Reflection for Today ▶️ ⏹️

Kintsugi Pot created by Thomas Yeung, Sticky & Blurry, 2022

And the Lord smelled a sweet savour; and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.
Genesis 8:22

Man is created in God's image, and we see from this verse that the image itself is flawed. God made a mistake—it may even be said that God sinned, first in succumbing to anger, and second through the consequent act of vengeance. But flawed as the creator God is, He is now willing to reconsider His part in the relationship with man. This God is our prototype. We are made in His image, flawed and error-prone, yet with the amazing capacity to redeem ourselves, to see our faults, to make amends and to accept the things we cannot change, even to embrace those things as qualities of the other that are part of their essential nature. I am reminded of this passage from the book, Alcoholics Anonymous.

And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation—some fact of my life—unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in God's world by mistake.1

The God of the Old Testament is far from "the perfect God" as we are so often taught. Throughout the stories in the Bible, from Old to New Testament, the scribes collectively (and perhaps unknowingly) depict God as being on His own journey of transformation, from vengeful to accepting, from controlling to releasing, from angry to loving. God's mistakes are our mistakes, God's redemption possibly our redemption—if we so choose. Many do not. Sometimes I do not, but I keep trying.

1 Alcoholics Anonymous, 1939, page 417