Day 6 - Eikons of Love

We love, so the first three chapters of Genesis inform us, in four directions. We love God, we love ourselves, we love others, and we love the good world God has given to us. So, when Adam and Eve chose to go against God’s good plan, they “cracked” that eikon. To be a cracked eikon means that our love is distorted in all four directions: we don’t love God as we can, we don’t love ourselves as we should, we don’t love others as we ought, and we don’t love the good world God gave us as we are designed. The gospel is designed to restore us in all four directions—in our love for God, for ourselves, for others, and the world.




 The word 'eikon' is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word meaning 'image.'  So the focus for this day is realizing that we are ideally to be image-bearers of God's love... towards Him, for ourselves, for others and for the world we live in.  It helps me, today, to think about the gospel being designed to restore us to the perfect reflection of God's love in all of those directions.  I think about what a cracked mirror does to a reflection - it distorts it.   And even though in and of myself I am hopelessly cracked, the gospel tells me that Jesus, living in me, can perfectly image His love in all directions in my life... and that IS good news.  :)