@FirstChurchofJerusalem
Today's Early Church Wisdom
“I shall not hesitate also to put into ordered form for you, along with the interpretations, everything I learned carefully in the past from the elders and noted down carefully, for the truth of which I vouch. For unlike most people, I took no pleasure in those who told many different stories, but only in those who taught the truth. Nor did I take pleasure in those who reported their memory of someone else’s commandments, but only in those who reported their memory of the commandments given by the Lord to the faith and proceeding from the Truth itself. And if by chance anyone who had been in attendance on the elders arrived, I made enquiries about the words of the elders—what Andrew or Peter had said, or Philip or Thomas or James or John or Matthew or any other of the Lord’s disciples, and whatever Aristion and John the Elder, the Lord’s disciples, were saying. For I did not think that information from the books would profit me as much as information from a living and surviving voice.
~ Papias of Hierapolis (c. 60–130 AD) From the Preface to his lost ‘Expositions of the Sayings of the Lord’
This week's Psalm is Psalm 31 'My Rock, My Shield, My Song'

God Looks Like Us

The simple truth is that He looks like us. God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, after our likeness” (Genesis 1:26). When God created humanity, He chose to make us in His own image and despite our Fall in the Garden, which soiled and marred that image, it remains the case that we are all image bearers. This doesn’t mean, of course, that because God is like us, we can see Him fully face-to-face, for this is not possible, at least in this life, given the greatness of His glory. No mere human has seen the Father in this way (John 1:18; John 6:46; 1 John 4:12), though all may see Him in themselves, in one another, and supremely in Christ – which brings us to the fact that Jesus is a far better image of God than we can ever be in this life.