Have you seen the new coin design with the King on the back? It’ll start being circulated very soon and will gradually make their way into our spare change in the next year or so. I understand that monarchs take approving this image of themselves very seriously – this portrait image is selected by the king himself at the Royal Mint in the UK and then that image is on-distributed to Commonwealth countries for use.
Do you notice anything… different about this image (apparently, it’s called an ‘effigy’ when it’s on a coin)?
The very first thing I thought when I saw it was, “wait… isn’t he balding?” It seems the king’s image has been treated with whatever the coin effigy equivalent of photoshopping is to airbrush him in a lustrous head of hair.
Now, before I go on, for those people in our church who have experienced hair loss, I want you to know that I don’t think this is a big deal. But seeing this effigy and the gap between it and reality makes me wonder whether the king believes that if we all think he has a full head of hair it will improve our opinion of his majesty.
Contrast this to the moment when God’s image arrived on earth. Aside from a few very notable exceptions, God’s majesty was entirely veiled in Jesus’ flesh. Consider the second person of the Trinity, existing in joyful perfection from all eternity taking on the ordinariness of human skin, getting scuffs and bruised and scarred, going through the indignities of puberty and banging his thumb with a mallet in Joseph’s workshop. Then consider him scourged and pierced, slung up on a cross. The path to Jesus’ glorification was the exact opposite of a Photoshop job.
Seeing him take up his cross on the road to glorification like that gives us courage to do likewise. We don’t need relentlessly accentuate the positive – even at your most beautiful now, you’re a seed compared to the magnificent tree that is to come. Render yourself to him. He makes you truly worthy.
grace and peace,
Steve