together with
Happy Tuesday, {{first_name| everyone}}!
If you missed yesterday's email, you can read it here.
In today's email…
📕 What God says right after he makes us, and why it's a job description
🪞 The dignity you're tempted to withhold from other people
📊 Trivia to test your knowledge on our memory verse…
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MEMORIZE 🧠
So God created man in his own ______, in the image of ______ he created him; ______ and ______ he created them.
Genesis 1:27
Want to memorize in your favorite translation? Try our new iPhone app here.
CONTEXT 📕
Genesis 1:27 doesn't stand alone.
It sits inside a short, deliberate scene, verses 26 through 31, and reading the whole thing changes how the verse lands.
In Genesis 1, verses 3 through 25, God speaks light, sea, land, plants, sun, moon, beasts, birds and fish into being. And after each day of creative work, God declares what he created good with the repeated refrain: And God saw that it was good.
Then on day 6, he stops and deliberates first:
Let us make man in our image…
No other creature gets this honor. Then comes our memory verse:
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
And then the commission. Right after he declares us made in his image, God hands out a role:
And God blessed them. And God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Being made in God's image is directly tied to a command to rule.
Not only were we created, we were created and given a purpose.
The image is something we are, and what comes with it is something we're put here to do: to represent God to all of creation by caring for what he made.
And our memory verse hands this to all humans: "male and female he created them."
Every human being, male and female, carries the calling to bear his image.
After creating humans on day 6, God steps back and looks at everything, us included, and calls it "very good" (Genesis 1:31).
The only thing in the chapter he calls very good is a world with image-bearers in it.
APPLY AND RESPOND 🏃
📖 Read: Genesis 1:26–31.
👂️ Reflect: If every person around you carries the image of God, who is the one person you've been treating as though they don't? The difficult coworker, the relative, the stranger you ignore?
🙏 Pray
Father, you made every person I'll meet today in your image, even the ones I find hard to love. Give me eyes to see the dignity you created them with. Where I've neglected this in others, help me honor it. Amen.
TRIVIA 📊
Click one of the options below to choose your answer. Let's see how you do…
In Genesis 1, what is the only part of creation God calls "very good"?
Best,
The Malachi Daily team 🙏
Today’s Contributors
Kieran is a husband and father living in NJ. In addition to Malachi Daily, he writes a personal newsletter about the intersection of faith, fatherhood and entrepreneurship.
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Try our iPhone app 📱
Want to go even deeper with memorizing Scripture and learning its context?
Our iPhone app, Within allows you to:
Memorize 1 verse every single week and learn its context through daily devotionals you can read (or listen to)
Memorize any verse you want in your favorite bible translation
Store all of your previously memorized verses in one place (and review them regularly with interactive games)
And much more!
What are the differences between Within and Malachi Daily?
Malachi Daily 📧 | Within 📱 | |
|---|---|---|
Type of tool | Email newsletter | iOS mobile app |
Cost | Free | 7-day free trial, then $5.99/mo or $49.99/year |
# of verses | 2 verses per month as a community | 4 verses per month as a community + unlimited for any verse you want |
Who chooses the verse | We choose | We choose AND you can memorize any verse you want, anytime |
Bible translation(s) | ESV | ESV, NIV, NLT, KJV, and NASB |
Reviewing previously memorized verses | You do this on your own | Use the built-in memory bank |
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