We all remember that Genesis tells us we are created in the image of God. We’ve long thought that we are – as God is – intelligent, free, interrelated, generative, and creative.
 
It occurred to Cardinal Carlo Martini that in Genesis God works. Ignatian spirituality has long grasped that when we seek God, we are seeking a busy God, actively creating moment by moment.
 
What we have not reflected on is that God works spontaneously, from who He is. So when God makes creatures in His own image, these creatures also work, and they work spontaneously, expressing who they are. Of course: birds make bird nests, not sofa beds. When apes work to eat, they do not plant and harvest, they climb trees and feast. All living things make seed and offspring like themselves, the image of the parents.
 
And humankind, what do we make? We co-create more human life, to start with. Then we make machines. They ape what we do, to start with. Some grab, some dig, some reach and stack, some “think.” But none of them work spontaneously; they all work according to the design we have put in them.
 
We ought to work that way, too – according to the design God put in us. So when we do anything, we ought to do it from our hearts and souls – as God does, expressing who we are.
 
There’s one other thing about the busy God. When God is finished – say, separating dark from light, or creating grass and trees – God rests. And then God notices that what He made “is good – very good.”
 
We will be in God’s image if we start the examen in the evening with thanks. That includes a sense that what we have done and what we have been through is good. If something is not good, then it is not in our true image – as Paul said, sin in me. 
 
For the rest, we can be content that what we have done is good – very good. Like God.