Tuesday 31 January

Just before Christmas I felt exhausted.  And I felt terrible about it.  I also felt a bit down, I wasn’t feeling able to get into the Christmas spirit, nor was I coming up with any new year's resolutions.  So, one night before going on Christmas holidays, I gave into my mood and pulled out a packet of instant potato mix for dinner.  It didn’t really help!

We all, I’m sure, have times like this.  But for some reason I can be left feeling bad for having emotions, needing sleeping, wanting to eat.  It sounds crazy doesn’t it?  Yet the stories we hear of the heroes of the faith don’t talk about their basic human responses and needs, I can feel like they don’t have them.  But I need sleep.  I can’t think well if I’m hungry.  I feel sad, hurt, happy.  So what’s wrong with me?

Our humanity can sometimes be presented as the problem with the world.  The consequence of sin.  The cause of pain.  But to be human is to be God’s creation.  He created a day of rest, for we need to rest.  He created food to sustain us, for we need to be sustained.  And he created emotions, feelings, thoughts.  I believe we will also still be people, humans, in the life after this one.  Perfected, yes.  Sinless, yes.  Everlasting, yes.  But humans.  After all, Jesus rose again in a body.  He ate fish on a beach with his best friends.  God didn’t want more angels, more animals or bodiless spirits.  He wanted you and me.  The Bible tells it this way -

“Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.”

So God created human beings in his own image.

In the image of God he created them;

male and female he created them.”

- Genesis 1 v 26 - 27

My humanity is not my sin.  My humanity does not need to be thrown off.  It is God’s creation.  A creation he once saw as good and one He will make perfect again.  I don’t need to fight it.  Instead, when I’m feeling out of sorts, I know I can turn to my creator for renewal and peace.  And so can you.