Dusty or Heavenly?

People often remark how much our daughters look like their mother. Some have even said they looked like me. In particular, my youngest – Amy – was once told, “If you had a mustache, you would look just like your daddy.” She got mad about it, and the “offending party” had to give her gum to make up with her! Our children bear our physical image, our “dust image.” Their dust was arranged in similar ways to ours. That makes my wife and me happy. But what makes us happier is to see them bear our “heavenly image” - adopting our faith, mirroring our values, and following our examples.

The Bible says that we are created with two images: “the image of the man of dust” and “the image of the man of heaven.” God created us to have physical characteristics like our parents – all the way back to Adam and Eve. But he also created us to bear his characteristics. In this life, we do so imperfectly. But it is God’s plan that we shall bear his image fully in heaven.

John wrote of it this way: “Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure” (1 John 3.2-3). As his born-again children, we bear his image now, but that heavenly image hides behind an earthly veil of sickness, aging, weakness, sorrow, and death. One day the veil will be removed, the dust shall be “wiped away”, and we shall be like him!