“The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.” (Jeremiah 31:3). Each of us are made in the image of God, but what kind of image are we? Are we an incredibly detailed and lifelike drawing in the style of photorealism, or are we a blurry and out of focus Impressionist painting, or an abstract cubist image comprising a fractured collage of multiple perspectives, or the barest scribblings of a doodle in the margins? The Lord has drawn each and every one of us with lovingkindness in His own image and according to His own likeness, but what have we allowed to happen to that image? What other artists and art styles have we allowed to be added onto the image that the Lord drew? And are any of these other additions or modifications also drawn with lovingkindness, or are there other, darker motives behind the changes. The good news is that thanks to the Atonement of Jesus Christ and the gospel of repentance, any time that the image of God of which we are has become corrupted by images and styles that are neither loving nor kind, God can take out a fresh canvas and draw us in His image once more. And each time that we repent and renew our covenants, the image of God that is drawn and redrawn becomes a little closer to the real thing. I hope that we may all embrace the goodness and beauty and truth of an image of God unsullied by the corrupting influence of the world.
