The LINK: 01/01
Friends and family of Congo-Pres,
Happy New Year! To us, changing the last number on the year is important, whether marking time, or updating forms and registrations, or just counting down towards something. As we keep hurtling forward, I want to share what we've been studying in our Men's Bible Study this year. We're in Ephesians right now, and at the start of the letter in the greek, Paul gives a single 12-verse long run on sentence praising God for God's goodness. And he writes this:
Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son. He is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his Son and forgave our sins. He has showered his kindness on us, along with all wisdom and understanding.
God has now revealed to us his mysterious will regarding Christ-which is to fulfill his own good plan. And this is the plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ-everything in heaven and on earth. (Ephesians 1:4-10)
Look at what Paul writes about God:
God decided long in advance.
God has intentions and plans, so far reaching, it's even before the creation of the world!
God loved us.
God chose us in Christ.
God adopted us into a family God wanted to adopt us.
God is pleased by adopting us.
God pours out grace, is rich in kindness, and freed and forgave us, and says that in Jesus we are faultless before God.
God wants to give us wisdom and understanding.
And what God did for us, God wants to do for all creation. God brought up Jesus from the grave, from death to life. And God wants to bring everything to-gether under Christ (the greek is often translated "gather up all things in him"), to love and give life in only the way God can.
When you look at the Old Testament, you'll see that God wanted to do that through Abraham, through Israel, the prophets proclaim it happening through the city of Jerusalem or from the temple. God's plan has been to love and take up all things for God's pleasure, and as we finish Advent, we're reminded that against all odds, God's plan is starting to be fulfilled in Jesus.
The New Year focuses on the new. Lots of things in life, culture, calendars, and technology look at the new. But we are a people of something so old that you can barely describe it. And that mysterious, secret will is to gather all of our accomplishments, our pains, our desecrated hopes, our misfires, our mistakes, our important things we treasure, all the mundane things we barely think about, all things on heaven and earth, and take them up in Jesus. Friends may this be a reminder of who we are and why we're called: to be a sign of God's plan, a first fruit of God's new creation shown to us in Jesus. God loves this world, no matter the year, and wants to use us to love it. No matter the year, God has a long plan before.
Blessings! Pastor Adam