by Brandon Beck

We’re made in the image and likeness of God. We’ve been told that since The Beginning. Each and every person is made in the image and likeness of God. We read this in The Beginning. John reminds us that “In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And we are made in that image and likeness.

When Samuel is sent by God to seek Saul’s replacement, God, and I’m paraphrasing here, tells Samuel, “Quit using your eyes and judging these people-books by their skin-covers! Do as I do; after all, I made you in my image! Look at other people’s hearts!” (1 Samuel 16:7b)

But what does that mean? How do we know someone’s heart? What even is a person’s heart? How do we get to it in this world where we’ve been taught to cover our nakedness with metaphorical fig leaves?

I love the way (forgiving the patriarchal language of his time) Bernard Silvester, twelfth-century poet and philosopher, describes the heart:

The animating spark of the body, nurse of its life, the creative principle and harmonizing bond of the senses; the central link in the human structure…mainstay of our nature, king, governor, creator.

But even more so, I love the description of the heart from the 2019 UK release of the Wellcome shortlisted memoir/cardiology text Heart: A History by Sandeep Jauhar, MD (2018), in which the above quote is the epigraph:

The spark of life, fount of emotion, house of the soul – the heart lies at the centre of every facet of our existence.

We have to know our own heart before we can look at other people’s; we have to look at our own heart in order to be open and receptive and perceptive of the heart of someone else.

And, yet, the system of humanity is a closed and interconnected one. My heart and your heart are of One heart within the heart of God – named or unnamed, known or unknown.

So, as I get to know my own heart, I, inevitably, am getting to know each and every other person’s heart as well.

In 1998, musician Geoff Levin released “The Coach,” a spoken word piece with his group Celestial Navigations on their album Chapter II. He performs the role of football coach motivating players before a game and helps them visualize the whole universe in their pockets and eventually says this to them:

What is small and insignificant here – you or that BB that you have in your pocket? I think we all know the answer to that. So when some dude comes up to you and says, “Wow, don’t you feel small and insignificant compared to the universe?” You say, “Hey. Now listen here dude, I got the whole universe in my pocket the size of a BB and I don’t even remember which pocket.”

And that’s just it, friends. In the Beginning, was the Word, and we each were part of that and still are and always will be. We’ve got it in our pockets. In our hearts. And we’re called to look at what’s in the pocket-hearts of others. That’s not so tough after all, because what’s in them is the same as what’s in us – the image and likeness of God.

Amen.