“I am sure of this, that he who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
I was watching a movie the other night and in one scene a dad had taken his kids backpacking in the mountains. As they were hiking to their intended campsite, he kept telling them, “There’s just one more hill.” But then they’d crest that hill only to find another one waiting for them. Sometimes life feels that way. We make some forward progress only to discover just how much further we still have to go. This is especially true when we’re talking about following Jesus and becoming more like Him. Paul here offers us some encouragement in the journey. Let’s take a look.
“This is why a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife, and they become one flesh.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
Well, here we are at another Friday when I didn’t have any idea what I was going to write about as I finished the day and got into bed, but then just before going to sleep something dropped straight into my metaphorical lap that I just couldn’t avoid. One of the things that I tell my church as often as I can make it come up naturally is that being a follower of Jesus doesn’t mean completely disengaging from any media sources that are not fully supportive of the Christian worldview. Rather, it means engaging wisely and with their worldview radar on high alert so they can identify ideas that are contrary to the truth and consciously reject them. They should do this they are engaging with various media by themselves, of course, but they should be especially vigilant about doing it when engaging with their kids both so that they are teaching them what is correct, but also so they are teaching them how to engage critically and through the lens of the Christian worldview. Well, the most recent episode of Abbott Elementary that we watched last night gave me the opportunity to do just that. Let’s talk about it.
“The report of your obedience has reached everyone. Therefore I rejoice over you, but I want you to be wise about what is good, and yet innocent about what is evil. The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you. Timothy, my coworker, and Lucius, Jason, and Sosipater, my fellow countrymen, greet you. I, Tertius, who wrote this letter, greet you in the Lord. Gaius, who is host to me and to the whole church, greets you. Erastus, the city treasurer, and our brother Quartus greet you.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
What are you known for? Is it a particular habit? A personality trait? Your vocation? There are all kinds of things people wind up being known for. Not all of them, though, are good. The same thing goes for the church. Churches have reputations. Some are known to be contentious and unwelcoming. Some are just known for being large. Some are known because of all the effective kingdom-advancing work they do. Paul commends the church in Rome here for something they were known for. I’ve got to say: theirs isn’t bad. Let’s talk about it and what follows as the letter draws to a close with the next post.
Happy New Year! We’re finally back and will pick back up our Romans journey tomorrow morning, Lord willing. For today, here is the first part of a quick New Year’s series reflecting on the extent of God’s knowledge of us and how we should react to that knowledge. Today as we dive into Psalm 139, we will marvel with David at God’s intimate knowledge of us and talk about some tools for remaining in that knowledge. Enjoy!
God Knows
A paradox is when two ideas which seem contradictory of one another are nonetheless simultaneously true, and we live in a world that’s full of them. Consider one particularly glaring one. We live in a world full of people screaming to be known. Depression and anxiety are off the charts these days in part because so many people feel isolated and alone, like no one really knows who they are. In response to this, and with the help of social media, many will invite the world into their most intimate spaces and times just so they can feel like somebody, somewhere, knows them. Of course, just because you show someone something intimate or personal about yourself doesn’t mean they really know you at all. Really knowing another person and being known by them takes relational investment over time. Without that, the presumed knowledge is merely a mirage. It may be a mildly comforting one (which is why so many people clamber for it), but when we are forced to face the truth, the shock of the cold water of reality can be debilitatingly intense.
We look to stories in the Bible as incredible tales of amazing people doing utterly remarkable things. The truth, though, is that most of them lived most of their lives in moments that were utterly mundane. That wasn’t just the case for characters in the Scriptures. It’s the case with our lives today too. And yet, as ordinary as most of our lives are, we long to experience the extraordinary. We want to be special, to know that we are more than we seem. This is where the wonder of the Christmas story comes racing to center stage. As extraordinary as we imagine that story to be, most of it was very, very ordinary. What made the difference in these ordinary moments was the movement of God in their midst. Today, as we wrap up our series, When Heaven Met Earth, we are talking about the ordinary moments in the lives of ordinary people, and how things can become entirely more extraordinary than that. Let’s get started.
The Miracle of Mundane Moments
Sometimes the most extraordinary things can happen out of the most ordinary circumstances. Consider something that every single person in the room has in their kitchen, and which most of us have used at least once in the last 24 hours. In 1945, Percy Spencer was working as a radar researcher at Raytheon Labs. Raised as an orphan who never finished elementary school, Spencer taught himself physics and advanced mathematics, joined the Navy, and through that discovered his penchant for science. One day, Spencer was working in the lab with a radar magnetron. That’s basically a tube that converts electrical signals into electromagnetic radiation. It had been invented a few years before and was essential to the invention of modern radar. As Spencer worked with this magnetron, he noticed that a bar of chocolate in his pocket had melted.
The Nexus 