Getting caught up with identifying myself by what I had or what I did for a living proved to be spiritually costly years ago. When I identified myself by what people thought of me or said about me, it led me to pay too much attention to “them” instead of focusing on how God loves and sees me. There have even been seasons of unforeseen challenges that caused me to be more interested in receiving accolades from others than giving my full, surrendered self to co-labor with God. However, when I began to understand the truth of Imago Dei, I was anchored and frequently prayed with Psalm 139. It was then that I became convinced of my belovedness and the beauty of hope. When I ponder God “knitting me together in my mother’s womb and being fearfully and wonderfully made,” I imagine God blowing his strong, life-giving breath into my atrophied faith muscle. During particularly trying seasons, when I trip over society’s standards of identity, I turn to Psalm 139, which picks me up and faces me in the direction of a God who created me in my mother’s womb—a place of no mistakes or unplanned pregnancies in the Divine’s eye. The verses remind me that God formed me, and every spiritual gift put inside of me remains there to fulfill the purpose for which God has called me.
Romans 5:5 provides the foundation for me to build a strong trust in God’s providential love, so much so that hope in this on-time God never disappoints. Why am I so sure? It’s because the fruit of the Spiritual Exercises has taught me that God can be found in all things, situations, people, and seasons. Hope keeps us vigilant and hungry for a Jesus sighting—in others, in scripture, and through personal experiences. Hope keeps me nimble, allowing me to get back up after falling, to “turn my other cheek,” and to reach for God as my first resort instead of my last. This hope cannot be contained or measured as there are no depths nor heights that can keep us from God’s loving reach.
Finding God in all things takes our faith to a deeper level and calls for “skin in the game”— actively responding in hope, regardless of what we are going through. God meets us where we are and invites us to go deeper and draw closer to him. Being anchored in Imago Dei strengthens my hopefulness. My hope doesn’t disappoint because it fills me with anticipation— to look for and wait on God for confirmation and direction. I often use imaginative contemplation with scripture to glean God’s messages for me. The biblical stories always remind me of the creative ways Jesus meets us wherever we are. Jesus met the Samaritan woman at the well, Zacchaeus in a tree, the Syrophoenician woman at a table, and the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Each of these characters possessed hope in a God who operates beyond human understanding and provides wherever he guides.
May we follow Jesus’ lead in knowing whose we are and exercise our hope muscle through the practice of imaginative contemplation, discernment, and praying the Examen. Regardless of the season, may we be strengthened in our conversations with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit with hopeful pleas— “God, show me how you see me. Show me what you put inside of me. Show me my gifts. Guide me to surrender to where you’re leading me.” May we be convinced that hoping and waiting for God to “show up” wherever we are never disappoints.
Going Deeper:
Exercise your hope muscle as suggested by Lori using one of the guides below:
Read and reflect more on Imago Dei here:
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Lori Stanley
Lori Stanley, MA, is the Executive Director of Loyola Institute for Spirituality in Orange, CA. She has been a practitioner of Ignatian spirituality for 20 years and uses its tools to address social injustices and to answer the call to accompany, educate and empower others to discover God’s deep personal love for them. Lori has a MA in Pastoral Theology with a concentration in Spiritual Direction from Loyola Marymount University. She and her husband of 35 years have one adult daughter.
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