I had a profound moment recently with my good friend Pansaonic Viera while chilling out at the end of a long day. (He is a quality guy but can impose himself too much at times so Mairi and I need to get the backgammon or Uno set out). Anyway…
Channel-hopping as I was, up came Bear Grylls in his new programme The Island in the second episode where a bunch of the bravado-beset guys had just caught their first meal of their ordeal – a decent-sized Caiman Croc. There was much strutting, high-fiving and banter as they took charge of the beast and took it back to camp.
One of the chaps was nominated to kill the animal ahead of its skinning and roasting and he did that quickly, humanely and with respect. But a profundity to the scene then descended tangibly once the Caiman had been killed. Even just looking at the men around the camp site it was obvious, even on TV, that the mood in the camp had changed from bravado to tenderness and then….to tears!
The camera followed one of the guys who’d been moved to tears, and who’d then scurried off around the corner in his embarrassment, because of what he had just seen. His mate who’d come to see him was also reduced to tears. Tears! What was going on? One minute these guys are thinking only with their stomachs and their alpha-male sensibilities; the next they are deeply moved/touched by something unseen.
I was so impacted by this that I stopped and prayed and asked Holy Spirit to show me what was going on. After a few minutes He took me to Genesis 1:27-28:
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
What on earth was going on? How did a band of brothers go from hurrahing to weeping?
I believe what happened is that they suddenly saw God – and check this out – in each other.
Whether in Christ yet or not, the Bible tells us we have all been created in the image of the Living God who made us – that we all look like God at our fundamental design/created level. And so I think the presence of Living God manifested in that moment to somehow arrest the men there, to communicate to them His great love, because of their God-given identity that they were exercising and discovering – to have dominion…over every living beast that moved on earth.
This was a supernatural moment that touched these blokes in unexpected places as they, for a fleeting moment, came to see a glimpse of God in each other and in themselves.
Wow.
npf
(Try and find the episode if you can. It’s near the end of episode 2.)