What Happens When We Forget Who We Are

So God created humankind in God’s image,
   in the image of God he created them;
   male and female he created them. Genesis 1:27

It occurs to me this week that the most painful news stories have one thing in common: they are a result of somebody forgetting that all of us have been created in the Image of God. All people, including:

• The pretty teenager who landed a job in a fancy Palm Beach spa only to be “stolen” by a different Palm Beach employer for more nefarious purposes.
• The miraculous quints born into poverty in Canada whose parents essentially handed over to the circus.
• Every immigrant arrested by ICE including the 90 Venezuela immigrants imprisoned in a Salvadorean prison in April, most of whom had actually not entered the United States illegally nor were “criminals.”

The starving in Gaza, the crushed in Kyiv, the kidnapped in Mozambique, the bullied, the harrassed, the betrayed. Each of these people was created in the Image of God. Those who are starving them, killing them, kidnapping them, hurting them are also created in the Image of God.

This is the most universally ignored Truth in our world right now: All people were created in the Image of God. To wound them, much less destroy them is to wound and destroy The Creator of Life.

I honestly do not know how this works, but I believe that our Creator cannot be destroyed and justice will one day prevail. In the mean time, please indeed pay attention. Terrible things happen when we forget who we are.

Pictured above: Virginia Giuffre (1983–2025), the Dionne Quintuplets – Annette, Emilie, Marie, Yvonne, and Cecile (all born in 1934; Cecile died this week at the age of 91), incarcerated immigrants in the maximum security Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador. Like you and me, each was created in God’s Image.