On the airplane returning from College Station, Texas, where six members of the Georgia 4 Disaster Medical Assistance Team (DMAT) sponsored by the Medical College of Georgia were recently deployed to help care for victims of Hurricane Ike, I couldn't help but reflect on the experience.

Hundreds of displaced residents of the Houston, Galveston and Beaumont, Texas, areas were housed in a university basketball arena serving as a temporary shelter. The majority of these evacuees had special needs, and many were bed-ridden and required assistance with the simplest activities of daily living.

WHILE THE THINGS I saw and experienced clearly made me proud to be an American, I was also struck by something much richer and nobler than national pride. I was repeatedly exposed during this trip to actions and behaviors that are best explained by the premise that we, as humans, are uniquely made in God's image.

The outpouring of generosity and kindness, the resiliency of the human spirit, and the respect for the intrinsic value and uniqueness of human life reinforced to me that we human beings have been made in God's image. God is love. God loves and cares for each one of us despite our failures, attitudes, and apparent value to society.

So, how exactly did this play out in Reed Arena of Texas A & M University in College Station, Texas?

GOD'S IMAGE COULD be seen in the scores of university and nursing students who came to volunteer their time to help turn, wipe up excrement and bathe residents. I saw God's image in one of our medics as she quietly listened to the middle-aged lady just transferred from a shelter in Houston and in physical pain from her Crohn's disease. She listened as the woman described the pain of three recent hurricane evacuations, the loss of a cousin who committed suicide after losing his entire family to Hurricane Katrina, and the young man found dead on his knees that morning in the other shelter.

As the medications and kindness started to take effect, one could visibly see the woman move from despair to emotional peace. I saw God's image in the actions of several of our medics who helped care for a woman with a large, cavitated, breast cancer that wouldn't stop bleeding. While one medic wiped up the trickles of blood from the cancerous breast and the woman's abdomen, the other medic took the woman's only blood-soaked brassier, washed it, dried it and picked up a clean blouse and pajamas from the donated clothing area.

I SAW GOD'S patience displayed as our team watched a middle-aged man with severe emphysema travel outside in his wheelchair to smoke after presenting just an hour before to our treatment area blue and in severe respiratory distress.

I saw God's love in family members who hovered protectively hour after hour over elderly parents incapacitated by Alzheimer's dementia.

If these behaviors are not God's image displayed in human form, then they are simply the actions of highly socialized life forms that have developed a sophisticated pattern of caring for each other. Personally, I suspect that's true to some degree, but there is much, much more.

Also, I think I understand better why one of my physician friends began a spiritual walk with God after his DMAT deployment to care for the victims of Katrina.

IN MY OPINION, what one experiences on a grand scale in disaster situations is an outpouring of unconditional love, kindness and no-strings-attached generosity by people who have been made in God's image.