The Glory and Rubbish of the Universe

We are both the glory and the rubbish of the universe -- but we never would have been the rubbish of the universe if we had not chosen the gutter.  If sin had not entered the world and we had not fallen, we would never have been the rubbish of the universe.  When our Lord is finished with His redemptive work, He will have made His people again the glory of the universe.  He will come then to be admired in His saints and glorified in all them that seek Him.

Man is the weakest creature there is, but he is the only creature that knows how weak he is, and that's where his glory is.  He is able to know how weak he is, and no other creature has such knowledge.  If you were to ask a mosquito (which I consider to be a very weak creature -- touch him and he's dead), "Are you weak?" I do not suppose he would say, "Yes."  He does not know he is weak, and he could not answer you even if he did.  He would not even know what you had asked of him.  I suppose mosquitoes do not particularly like human beings.  If mosquitoes talked, they would call us "the animal that swats" because that is the only thing they know about us.  To mosquitoes, we are simply the creatures that swat them when they land on us.

Man is the unknown, the pitiful, the wonderful, the weak, the mysterious -- and yet he is the only creature who knows that he is all this.  Man is the only creature that sins, and yet he is the only creature that could know that he sins and laments his sin.  Man is the only creature that laughs; he is the only creature that knows how foolish and inconsistent he is, and laughs at himself.  He is the only creature that aspires because there's no other creature dissatisfied with himself.  Man alone is dissatisfied with what he is and longs to become something more.

Man can go up and around the earth now and look down on it -- because he is the only creature who aspires beyond present reality.  The other creatures are exactly as they ever were.  What does this indicate? It indicates that God made man in His own image.  Man bears the image and likeness of God, and of nothing else can that be said.

Man is also the only creature that prays.  God made man to worship; he is the only creature on earth made to commune with God in that way.  The lion roars for his prey, and the bird builds its nest in the thickets.  The stormy wind blows, and the snow falls, but snow does not pray, and neither does the bird, nor the lion, nor the stormy wind.

Seen as a minute physical creature in the vastness of the universe, man is small indeed.  Seen as a spiritual creature in the bosom of God, he is greater than all the winds that blow, all the mountains that rise, all the seas that flow, and all the rivers that run down to the sea.  He is great because God made him in His own image.  That's why the Son came among us as He did.  Why would the eternal Son become a man?  He was the Son of God.  Why did He become the Son of man?  Because the creature bearing the image of God had sinned; he had become the glory and the rubbish of the universe.

[excerpts from A.W. Tozer's God's Power For Your Life: How the Holy Spirit Transforms You Through God's Word]