Imago Dei

There's a touching story, today, in our local paper, the Brazosport Facts. Apparently, a store owner in Angleton, the county seat, noticed a pigeon which had got stuck on a sign. Some sort of twine, tied around its leg, had become entangled in a sign. The poor bird kept struggling to break free, but only succeeded in making matters worse.
Soon, the police department, animal control officers, and representatives from a local animal rescue group, gathered in the street. With the help of a bucket truck the pigeon was rescued, and will now spend quality time recovering at the animal rescue center.
What a great story! The store owner called 911 because he couldn't think who else to call. And the police responded magnificently, just as one would expect in small town USA. For a brief time, Brazoria County's finest had their attention focused on the fortunes of a frightened young bird.

Unfortunately, the same paper told the story of Edy Joel Jimenez-Ulloa, a 25 year old man from Honduras whose body was found in a ditch not far from Angleton. His body had been bundled into two black trash bags and left, just like trash, at the side of a country road. As yet, there have been no arrests.

Does no one see the frightening incongruity of these two stories? One demonstrates all that is good about human beings, whose compassion can even extend to a frightened bird; the other story demonstrates all that is bad about human beings, whose malevolence can be deadly. In the former, we remember our inheritance. The divine spark flares, if only for a moment. In the latter, God's image is defaced. The spark gutters and dies. And the most frightening thing of all is that we see ourselves in both stories. The hands that heal and the hands that hurt are, far too frequently, one and the same. They are ours.




First story: http://www.thefacts.com/story.lasso?ewcd=7d4ad9694341ad29
Second story: http://www.thefacts.com/story.lasso?ewcd=2f15cbd2b0550251