Thursday, July 26, 2018

It's the Circle of Life

Thursday, July 26, 2018
You learned about the Good News from Epaphras, our beloved co-worker.  He is Christ’s faithful servant, and he is helping us on your behalf.  He has told us about the love for others that the Holy Spirit has given you.  So we have not stopped praying for you since we first heard about you.  We ask God to give you complete knowledge of his will and to give you spiritual wisdom and understanding.  Then the way you live will always honor and please the Lord, and your lives will produce every kind of good fruit.  All the while, you will grow as you learn to know God better and better.  Colossians 1:7-10(NLT)
In the Walt Disney animated movie Lion King[2] Mufasa is teaching his son, Prince Simba all about life.  One of the taglines is:  The greatest adventure of all is finding our place in the circle of life.[3]  Simba is told to respect the antelope.  Confused, Simba questions Mufasa:  Um, Dad, don’t we EAT the antelope?  Dad agrees, but then reminds his cub that lions also die and return to the ground to become the grass antelopes eat.  This is the circle of life. 
Mufasa’s wisdom aside (after all, there are holes in his metaphysics – just ask Rafiki, the baboon who plays the shaman clergy seer if there is more to it than blood, sinew and bones returning to the ground); well…aside from the Lion King’s life-circle lesson, there is a spiritual circle of life that Paul holds up for us in his letter to the Colossian believers.
Paul had done much work at Colossae, bringing pagans to Christ.  Epaphras, at Paul’s direction, had been dispatched to the region to help form the new church after Paul left.  Epaphras reported back to Paul that the believers there were growing in their love for God and service to people.  In responding Paul shared his joy at their growth, and how he was praying daily for their continued growth in understanding God’s Word, so they would bear even greater fruit for the kingdom. 
In so many ways this is the Christian, or spiritual circle of life.  The Gospel is shared, a seed is planted.  One comes alongside to nurture that seed of faith, as it grows into a fruitful Kingdom vine. 
It was that way for me (and probably you).  My parents loved Jesus and his church.  They passed this love along to me.  Even in my far country Prodigal son days, I could run far from God, but never out from under Mom and Dad’s prayers.  In due time the faith seedling survived the storm, began to grow on the bread of life, and began to bear fruit.
When your faith survives adolescence, and you begin to exhibit the signs of maturing, the circle of life ceases to be linear…just passed down from leader to follower; it commences bending in an arc to reach wider and deeper.  I’m not just a son, brother, cousin, and uncle…I am a father, grandfather, and…heaven help me…great-grandfather!  At my age I can’t help looking back; it’s been a lot of years since the faith once-delivered to the saints[4] was first told to me at my mother’s knee.  That faith was deepened in Sunday School every week.  It was sharpened in worship, tested in the world, and began to bear fruit as the Spirit worked within to change and grow a seedling into something fit for the Owner of the Vineyard to use.
This is the circle of true life.  It’s not the jungle, or the African plain, eating and being eaten; this is the surrender of the soul, dying to self, living in Christ.
In the movie, Simba the young lion king had ducked out on his responsibility to actually BE king.  Simba was rebuked by Rafiki (the baboon preacher).  Rafiki told Simba to think about the circle of life, then reminded him:  You have become less than you ARE!
That is a challenge to change…to look up and BE changed.
For You Today
We all need a Rafiki to remind us to be what God is calling us to be.  So, let’s have Paul’s benediction ring in our ears today:
We ask God to give you complete knowledge of his will and to give you spiritual wisdom and understanding.  Then the way you live will always honor and please the Lord, and your lives will produce every kind of good fruit.  All the while, you will grow as you learn to know God better and better.  Colossians 1:7-10(NLT)
You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day. 

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[1] Title Image:  I, Hot Dog Wolf [GFDL, from Wikimedia Commons
[2] ©1994 Disney Productions
[3] Ibid. & IMDB
[4] Jude 1:3

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