From Image to Union in Christ
Preface
In The Architecture of My Faith in Christ, I wrote about faith not as doctrine memorized, but as presence lived — Christ as spark, companion, and mirror.
That was the beginning, the foundation.
But faith is never mine alone.
It is written into all of us — in our longing, our fracture, and our return.
This is the architecture of my faith in us:
how I see God’s image reflected in humanity,
how I understand our turning away,
and how I trust Christ to restore us again into communion.
🪨 The Foundation: Created in God’s Image
Humanity was created to reflect God’s eternal presence — His love and kindness alive in us.
This image is not perfection but communion: life lived in relationship with God, one another, and creation.
Even here in the beginning, I see the pattern that will shape all that follows:
life with God is not a climb upward toward greatness, but a rooting downward into love.
“God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27)
🌑 The Collapse: The Bend of Sin
With the gift of free will and the limits of mortality, humanity bent inward.
I know in my own life how easily I curve toward self instead of God, neighbor, or creation.
Sin is not only wrong action; it is this inward curve, this forgetting of communion.
For me, I saw it clearest in my trading years.
I convinced myself I was building security for my family,
but what I was really doing was feeding fear and grasping for control.
That grasping pulled me away from descending into the soil of grace —
away from trust, humility, and love.
In that turning, we are uprooted from love,
pulled away from the soil where life begins.
Yet even in this collapse, a yearning stirs within us —
a quiet ache for restoration, for return.
“All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23)
💭 The Yearning: The Longing for Return
God did not abandon us to our fracture.
Through prophets and commandments, He signaled the way back.
The law gave guidance, the prophets gave warning, the psalms gave longing.
But these were signposts, not solutions.
They revealed our brokenness but could not heal it.
Humanity longed not only for rules but for restoration,
not only for commandments but for communion.
I know this longing in myself.
When my children were born, I gave Maddie and Jack my father’s name —
not only to honor him,
but to hold them close to the spirit and story of family I wanted them never to lose.
That naming was my way of planting them in a deeper soil,
of yearning for what could connect us beyond fracture.
“I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” (Jeremiah 31:33)
That yearning prepared the way for something more than words or rules:
for God’s very presence to take flesh among us.
🧱 The Cornerstone: Christ the Bridge
In time, the eternal Word became flesh.
Christ, the Son, entered history not to abolish the law but to fulfill it.
He embodied forgiveness and communion, bridging humanity and divinity.
In Him, apathy was overcome,
and faith was revealed as pure gift.
Christ became both spark and compass:
igniting life within us, guiding us back through grace, presence, and spark.
I still remember the first time I felt Christ’s presence in a way that left no doubt.
It was not in a sanctuary, but in silence —
a moment of collapse where I expected only emptiness,
yet felt instead a presence beside me.
That was the cornerstone moment:
the assurance that I was not alone,
that God’s presence had taken flesh not only in history but in me.
“And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)
“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.” (Ephesians 2:8)
“Built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.” (Ephesians 2:20)
As cornerstone, Christ rebuilds our fractured image.
In Him, what was uprooted is rooted again.
And from this cornerstone, the Human Trinity takes shape —
love, forgiveness, and kindness restored as our fragile reflection of the divine.
🏛️ The Structure: The Human Trinity Restored
In Christ, the Human Trinity — love, forgiveness, kindness —
once more reflects the Holy Trinity — Father, Son, Spirit.
This Human Trinity is not a rival to the divine,
but its fragile reflection in us.
No longer fractured, but restored in Christ,
we become what we were created to be: image rejoined, communion alive.
When I look back, I can see how often love in me has been conditional,
or kindness transactional.
And yet again and again, Christ restores me.
In choosing to co-parent not out of resentment but out of love,
I began to glimpse the Father’s heart.
In choosing to reconcile the drama between generations with forgiveness rather than silence,
I began to experience the Son’s presence.
These choices did not come from me alone;
they were the Spirit at work — a spark I could feel alive within me.
To live this way is to descend again into God’s soil:
planting love where malice took root,
planting kindness where negligence had grown,
planting forgiveness where apathy had spread.
And in those choices, I saw my life in the mirror of Christ’s —
not perfect, but patterned by grace.
“See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.” (1 John 3:1)
“Like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house.” (1 Peter 2:5)
🌀 The Spiral Descent: The Human Ascend
What I call the Human Ascend is, in truth, a descent —
not climbing higher but walking lower.
It is like a spiral staircase winding down into the soil,
where roots press deep and life begins again.
We do not ascend out of being human;
we descend into it.
Into humility, into presence, into communion.
The path is not escape but return:
from ignorance to wisdom,
from fracture to union,
from self-enclosure back into God’s embrace.
This is the pattern Christ Himself revealed:
“Though he was in the form of God,
he did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death —
even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:6–8)
Christ’s life was one of self-emptying love.
And each descent in my own life has carried this same pattern.
In parenting, in family fracture, in inherited wounds,
I have been asked to walk lower —
to choose humility instead of pride,
reconciliation instead of revenge,
presence instead of escape.
In those choices, I discovered the love of the Father
and the forgiveness of the Son.
And in that discovery, the Spirit was activated in me —
a spark I could not ignore.
Each step of this descent mirrors His:
letting go of pride, loosening our grasp, laying down false crowns.
Each step is carried by faith as gift;
each spark is fanned by the Spirit.
And in this spiral descent, Christ becomes the mirror in which we see ourselves more truly —
not in glory, but in grace.
He walks with us into the ground of love,
where life is made whole again.
“The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day.” (Proverbs 4:18)
🏠 The House of Communion
This is not theory; it is the pattern of our life with God.
The spark that Christ gives becomes our compass.
The spiral of the Human Ascend is the shape of our shared journey.
And every time we return to love, forgiveness, and kindness,
we find ourselves again in the house of communion —
Christ as cornerstone, Spirit as breath, the Father as foundation.
And as I first wrote in The Architecture of My Faith in Christ:
He still walks beside me — spark alive, presence near, guiding me home.