A soul of great dignity
A castle of diamond
When Teresa pictured the soul as a castle of clear diamond or crystal, she was making a point about its worth. We can scarcely conceive, she marveled, of the soul's great dignity and beauty — and most of us go through life with no idea what we are. We tend to our bodies and our reputations and our possessions and give almost no thought to the immense, God-shaped interior we carry within.
The foundation of this dignity is in the very first chapter of the Bible. God created human beings in his own image, the text says, male and female he created them. Of all the creatures, only humanity is stamped with the divine likeness, made to bear and reflect God himself. The psalmist marvels at it too: you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings, and crowned him with glory and honor.
This matters enormously for the journey inward. If the soul were a cheap and shabby thing, going in would not be worth the trouble. But the soul is a diamond castle built to house the King, crowned with glory, made in the image of God. To neglect your interior life is to leave a palace empty and live in the shed. You carry within you something of immense worth — worth the long journey to discover.
“God created man in his own image. In God's image he created him; male and female he created them.”
— The account of creation — Genesis 1:27 (WEB)
Recover the dignity of your soul — a diamond castle made in God's image — and let its great worth make the journey inward worth taking.
“For you have made him a little lower than the angels, and crowned him with glory and honor.”
We carry a shrunken picture of ourselves — a body to maintain, a surface to manage — and we live down to it, leaving the inner rooms dark for lack of knowing they are there. The interior work is to let a truer self-image take hold: to believe you are a dwelling God built for himself, and to let that dignity draw you in to tend what you have been ignoring.
This week, give your soul the kind of deliberate care you give your body: set aside real time for the interior life — reflection, prayer, attention to your inner world before God — honoring the dignity of what he made in his image.
Keep a soul fascinated with its surface — its body, its image, its performance — and it will never suspect the palace standing dark within. What the enemy cannot abide is a person who knows her own dignity as God's dwelling, for she goes in and tends the rooms he wanted left empty.
We live in a culture that obsesses over the body and neglects the soul almost entirely — pouring time and money into the surface of ourselves while the vast interior, made in the image of God, goes untended and unexplored. We do not even know what we are. We treat as a shed the thing God built as a palace for himself.
To recover a sense of the soul's dignity is to find the journey inward suddenly worth taking. You are not a body that happens to have feelings; you are an image-bearer of God, a diamond castle crowned with glory, carrying within you a room fit for the King. Do not spend your whole life decorating the courtyard and tending the body while the palace within stands empty. Honor the soul God dignified, and go in to tend the rooms made for him.
- Do I tend my body lavishly and my soul barely at all?
- Do I even know the dignity of what God made in me?
- What would change if I treated my soul as a palace built for the King?
Lord, you made me in your image, a soul of great dignity crowned with glory, and I have tended the shed and left the palace empty. Teach me the worth of what you made in me, and make me willing to go in and tend the rooms built for you. Amen.