Just as I downloaded Jen Wilkin’s new book, ‘In His Image’, from Netgalley onto my Kindle two things happened;
Firstly, my working hours doubled. This sounds much worse than it actually is but nevertheless, it has meant less time for reading.
And secondly, a series of Sunday sermons on the prophet Isaiah began in church.
On reflection, it seems to me that these turned out to be well timed circumstances. Less reading time meant that it has taken longer than usual for me to finish this book but in actual fact that has been a good thing. ‘In His Image’ is not the kind of book that you should read quickly anyway. If you’re familiar with A W Tozer’s classic ‘The Knowledge of the Holy’ then you can expect a similar read. Jen draws from Tozer’s well known work on the attributes of God to help develop her own ideas on the theme and it’s a theme worth spending time on. It’s worth taking the time to read this book slowly and it’s worth spending more time reflecting on the additional Bible verses and questions provided at the end of each chapter, to linger on each individual attribute of God’s character, letting it push the borders of your understanding of him further.
Dovetailing nicely with the sermons, I read the chapter on the holiness of God in the same week as Sunday thoughts on Isaiah’s experience of a dramatic and humbling vision of the holiness of God.
I read of the goodness of God in another chapter as that Sunday in church we read of Isaiah being told by God to comfort his people, to ‘speak tenderly to Jerusalem’ and that they would receive an abundance of good things from the Lord after all their suffering. (Isaiah 40:1-2)
This is a thoughtfully written, orderly examination of the nature of God. Little personal stories help to illustrate the point being made in each of the ten sections which helps the text from becoming overly scholarly.
I would recommend this book because Jen Wilkin helps us to bow just as Isaiah once did before a vision of God that helps us to change our perspective on life and on ourselves.
Surely we have a great need to have a more expansive vision of God - a vision that will lead us to worship him more truly and more deeply. Knowing God better will make it possible for us to know ourselves better, to know our purpose in life, and as this book highlights, to go beyond the choices concerned with exactly what we should do and focus more on who God is making us – always ‘In His Image’.
