(Image by the Author)
"From the mouths of infants and sucklings, You have founded strength, for the ending of Your foes, to cause enemy and avenger to cease." (Psalm 8:3)
There is a story - that when Adam was formed in Eden, the ministering angels suddenly were confused, and did not know in which direction to offer their "Holy, holy, holy!" - so true was the human likeness to the Divine.
Only when Adam fell into "a deep sleep" could the angels discern which was the Genuine Article and which the earthly reflection.
And there is a story - that as soon as our father Abraham extended kindness to his three mysterious visitors, those guests, who actually were angels, suddenly were awestruck to find themselves in the presence of Divine Compassion.
And there is a story - that our father Jacob himself was the ladder in his famous dream - about which we read this week - spanning heaven and earth, with angels of the Divine ascending and descending on him.
And the story says that those angels were poking, and prodding the sleeping Jacob, goading him with the verse, "Israel, in whom I, God, shall glorify Myself."
The angels would ascend up into heaven and see "his image," says the story - and then would be dismayed, descending once again to earth, at finding the human being unconscious and inert.
If humankind is the image of God asleep in the world -
What would the world be like if we were to awake?
Could this then be a world in which the Divine seemed absent, in which creatures suffered without experiencing compassion? Or would it, rather, be a world in which one could hardly take three steps without coming face to face with another glorious manifestation of godly goodness, and another extension of godly kindness, and another expression of divine vision and wisdom, and another, and another?
"Indeed the Eternal One is present in this place - and I - I did not know," says Jacob upon waking. (Genesis 28:16)
Our Jewish tradition suggests this means that Jacob did not truly know himself, as an expression and extension and reflection of God's own Self, until that moment.
Life is all about the waking up.
But in what spirit do we wake, and as what kind of image of the Divine do we rouse ourselves?
Consider - a sacred syllogism:
Axiom one: humankind equals image-of-the-Divine - so says the Genesis account.
Axiom two: humankind has tremendous liberty of choice and action - to be kind or to be cruel, for example - you can test and prove that one every day.
Therefore, conclusion: humankind gets to determine what sort of image-of-God this world will have, at least insofar as humanity is concerned.
Of course there are forces and phenomena in this world that are mightily and terribly beyond ourselves - and we are only transient, and so often susceptible, swept this way and that by waves and currents that are often not of our own personal design.
But so much of the world of our lives is shaped by ourselves - and that quotient seems only to increase.
And in virtually every moment, we have the capacity to decide: This is how I will be. This is what I will do. This is what it will mean for me to stand up and to be an alert being in the world. This is how I will respond, and what I will make manifest, in view of where I find myself, and in the face of what I see before me.
To the full extent of our consciousness, and the reach of our capacities, such decisions are ours. What other being is so endowed with the capacity to choose a path, for itself and for its world?
"When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, moon and stars that You have set in place" - says the eighth Psalm - "what is humankind that You should be mindful of us, and child-of-Adam that you should task us with a role?"
The terrifying fact is that we are so young by the measure of the world, still only newly testing and discovering our wondrous, terrible capacities by glorious trial and horrific error - and, individually, we never get to be all that old. And wisdom comes slowly, all too often late.
"Yet you have made us little less than divine" - the Psalm goes on to say - "and have adorned us with glory and majesty, giving us dominion over Your handiwork, placing everything under our feet." (Psalm 8:4-7)
Do we trample, or do we walk mindfully and purposefully, and beneficently?
Ours is a glorious and a vertiginously terrifying prerogative. Our being human entails not just the possibility of shaping and manifesting goodness and redemption, but also the shadow-possibility of forging and expressing wreck and wrath, of devastating ourselves and the fellow-beings all around us, and the world of our times, of desecrating the image of God that we are.
What kind of image of the Divine will we be?
'Watch this space' - as the work-in-progress signage says. The answer is yet to be revealed - by us. We ourselves are writing the verdict in the case of humankind.
And if that's not a wake-up call, I don't know what is.