Imago Dei

By Peter Venable

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“…the gods of the Ethiopians were inevitably black with flat noses while those of the Thracians were blond with blue eyes.”
    —Xenophanes 

From our projection booths 
we project shadowy images 
on the universal screen “God”—super-
impose luminous and ominous features
on Him (her, it) our own likeness--
and forecast our features on “God.” 

In our era God
has more shades and shadows
than light—so many see their “godly” 
silhouettes flicker against cave walls 

since all see through glass, darkly.*

Peek into an eternal lens, back
to a seer writing to his doubting 
workers in an ancient Greek city.
With a few strokes of a reed pen, he inks

He is the image of the invisible God.**

*1 Cor 13:12, **Col 1:15

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The writer has written sacred and secular verse for many decades. He’s appeared in Ancient Paths, Prairie Messenger, The Lyric, The Anglican Theological Review, The Christian Century, The Merton Seasonal and Windhover. His Jesus Through A Poet’s Lens is available at Amazon. He is at petervenable.com and on Facebook.

Peter's other work on Foreshadow:
A Saturday's Quartet (Poetry, June 2023)
Truth Is Subjectivity (Poetry, April 2024)
Behold (Poetry, May 2024)
Jesus' Face (Poetry, June 2024)