Living Your Life in Christ

Jesus and the Just Reign of God
Live Justly in the Reign of God
Treat Everyone Equally

Colossians 2:1-7

The Message

2 I want you to realize that I continue to work as hard as I know how for you, and also for the Christians over at Laodicea. Not many of you have met me face-to-face, but that doesn’t make any difference. Know that I’m on your side, right alongside you. You’re not in this alone.

^2-4 I want you woven into a tapestry of love, in touch with everything there is to know of God. Then you will have minds confident and at rest, focused on Christ, God’s great mystery. All the richest treasures of wisdom and knowledge are embedded in that mystery and nowhere else. And we’ve been shown the mystery! I’m telling you this because I don’t want anyone leading you off on some wild-goose chase, after other so-called mysteries, or “the Secret.”
⁵ I’m a long way off, true, and you may never lay eyes on me, but believe me, I’m on your side, right beside you. I am delighted to hear of the careful and orderly ways you conduct your affairs, and impressed with the solid substance of your faith in Christ.

From the Shadows to the Substance

^6-7 My counsel for you is simple and straightforward: Just go ahead with what you’ve been given. You received Christ Jesus, the Master; now live him. You’re deeply rooted in him. You’re well constructed upon him. You know your way around the faith. Now do what you’ve been taught. School’s out; quit studying the subject and start living it! And let your living spill over into thanksgiving.

For Reflection

There's that word again, mystery.  To what extent can you accept God's mystery?  We find our God of love, compassion, grace, and justice deeply embedded in mystery.

I suppose, in modern language, we must suspend belief in the realities of this world for the belief in a world as God wishes it to be.  Bathe in the mystery. Believe in the unseen, the inexplicable and the speculative.  God has been revealing God's self and God's creation and will continue to do so in the here and now and in the future.  God reveals the substance of God's mystery slowly, in God's time as we are able to understand and accept God's reality. 

Pray

that you will be open and ready to receive God's revelations.  Live in the moment of God's time.  Pray that you will let your life be the living word of God revealing the substance of God's mystery to all.