Our preciousness, uniqueness, and individuality are not given to us by those who meet us in clock-time but by the One who has chosen us with an everlasting love, a love that existed from all eternity. (Henri Nouwen, Life of the Beloved, p.48)
AIM: To encourage participants, within the context of creation as a vehicle of divine revelation, to recognise and value themselves as made in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1: 26-27) and to desire to grow into and live out of that identity.
Our Intentions:
To enable participants to:
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reflect on what it means to be made in the image and likeness of God, given our understanding of God and our experience of humanity
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identify the way(s) in which they image God and appreciate the complementarity of gifts
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reflect on their identity within the context of the rest of humanity and the whole of the created order, and on the implications of this for self-awareness and behaviour
Programme :
Welcome and Stilling
Reflection Groups (Images of God)
Made in the Image and likeness of God
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Original Grace
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Personal Reflection
BREAK
Prayer
Closure: Led review . . . Home-time . . . Closing ‘moment’
Link: Music: In the Image of God by Mandie Pinto
Proverbs 8: 22-31
I was created when God’s purpose first unfolded . . . before the first grains of the world’s dust. When God fixed the heavens firm . . thickening the clouds above, fixing fast the springs of the deep oceans . . . I was by God’s side . . .ever at play in God’s presence, at play everywhere in God’s world, delighting to be with the children of humankind.
CAN YOU RECALL moments when you have felt touched by God in the kind of way that has brought your Godseed (indwelling God) to life?
Remember these moments now in prayer.
What was the context?
How did you feel?
What changed for you?
What conversation do you want to have with God about these moments?
Genesis 1: 26-27
God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and God said to them: “Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it”.
Grandparenting God,
You see our sin as
Symptomatic stutter,
self-effacing struggle
to ignore
the confounding reality
of Your willful
vulnerability:
“I love you
Because I can’t do Anything else.
I made you, Every last part of you:
All that’s hidden And all that’s revealed,
All that’s muddled And even all that’s clear.
You are,
At the risk
Of repeating Myself,
Dear to Me.
You are precious
In My eyes
because…
just because
you are Mine.
That’s enough for Me.
And it will have to do for you.
Wrestle with it
Until you get tired
And then relax
And give in.
Take a deep breath
And enjoy.”
(Michael Moynahan SJ)
Return to whatever stood out for you in the session.
Read the following article, notice what strikes you or stays with you: