Tuesday, December 22, 2015
For Christ himself has brought peace to us. He united
Jews and Gentiles into one people when, in his own body on the cross, he broke
down the wall of hostility that separated us.
Ephesians 2:14(NLT)
A professor I studied with
at Duke was a “Gen-X’r”[2]. He didn’t give tests, but rather moved the
class along with mini-projects, breaking into small groups for interaction; he
builds a sense of community so the whole class can work on a learning curve
together.
(Not exactly the Little
House on the Prairie school marm teaching the three R’s!)
To a 1940’s-born Baby Boomer
it is chaos.
Give me a book, three
quizzes, a mid-term and a final and I’ll get an “A”. Force me into small groups and I break into a
cold sweat.
There has always been a gap
between generations. I’m certain I gave
my parents more gray hair than they deserved.
When it was my turn to be the parent, I was the one on the receiving
end. When my son was a pre-teen he would
get lazy about cleaning his room (big surprise!). Elizabeth would drop a hint or two, but never
get any results.
Then, inevitably, one day
while our son was at school, the white tornado would visit his
room, restoring order and reclaiming a view of the floor surface. When Jason would come home in the afternoon
you could hear it all over the house: Oh
NO! She trashed my room again!
One person’s orderliness
is another’s chaos!
So what does chaos have to
do with Paul’s letter to the Ephesians? There’s
a connection between Paul and Moses.
Listen to the first and second verses of the creation account in Genesis:
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Genesis 1:1 - 2(NRSV)
That expression formless
void in Hebrew is bo'-hoo, and it means to be empty[3]. Formless, empty and covered in darkness; this
is the very essence of chaos. (That also pretty much describes my room when I was a teen).
Paul uses the word peace
a couple of times in his letter to the Ephesian church. This word is eirēnē, and it means to join (as in knit back together
that which was broken apart). When
healthy bones are broken due to an injury, often they knit back together
stronger than before the break.
On the one hand we have chaos – void, empty and dark – a kind of
brokenness; on the other hand we have peace – brokenness being healed, knit
back together. This is the kind of peace
of which Paul spoke.
Peace and chaos – words and worlds that collide!
For You Today
The conclusion of Advent,
our waiting, is only a few days away.
Could it be that God wants to use this time of anticipation to knit
something together for you…bring healing and strength to some brokenness?
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