THE THEO IN YOU

​It has been a pleasure these past few months to sign and personalize copies of Theo for many of you. A number of the inscriptions I’ve written, including ones to people I don’t yet know personally, contain the phrase “with thanks for the Theo in you.” ​

Perhaps that begs the question: is there a Theo in each of us? ​

I say yes, on two grounds. ​

1) The word “Theo,” as you’ve probably perceived already, is a nod to deity. As a prefix, the two syllables are used in words like theology, theophany, theodicy, theocratic, and so on. Their presence hints at divinity, at sacredness, at the everlasting. So, is there something of the divine, something sacred, something everlasting about us? I’ll answer that question with some questions: aren’t we “all created in God’s likeness”? Doesn’t God’s image, marred though it might be, reside in us? Doesn’t the Book say that people are, like nothing else in creation, “the image and glory of God”? I like CS Lewis’s statement that we were designed and created to be ‘‘little Christs,” to reflect the love, the beauty, the goodness and fullness of life that is in God. The Theo DNA is in us all.

And then, ​

2) Isn’t there within all of us (precisely because of reason 1) a heart that is capable of great kindness, grace, and generosity. That is the kind of heart I tried to capture in the old man from Portugal, one which expresses itself winsomely in word and deed. The prospect of living as Theo lived is not at all fictitious. It’s a matter of surrender, of ‘art lovingly done.’ ​I’m thankful for the Theo in you today.

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