Deeply Rooted

 

Friday, November 12, 2021

And now, just as you accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord, you must continue to follow him.  Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him.  Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness.  Don’t let anyone capture you with empty philosophies and high-sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from the spiritual powers of this world, rather than from Christ.  For in Christ lives all the fullness of God in a human body.  So you also are complete through your union with Christ, who is the head over every ruler and authority.  Colossians 2:6-10

Following anything closely creates roots; just ask a drug addict, or a sports fan.  It works positively in a person’s life just as certainly as it can have a negative result.  If you follow good directions, you wind up where you wanted to go.  If you hear good directions, but decide to ignore what you heard, your chances of winding up in the place you want to be diminish exponentially.  At the very least, the trip becomes harder and depletes more resources.

Paul was encouraging the Colossian believers to follow Christ.  Indeed, Paul’s advice was not just following, but following closely enough to let the roots of their lives become entwined with the Messiah.  In contrast Paul warns them to be cautious of empty philosophies and high-sounding nonsense that come from human thinking. 

This short paragraph explores the possibilities of living the surrendered life of a follower of Christ from the sublime to the ridiculous in 78 words.  That is precise direction-giving!  But truth be told, you don’t need a lot of words when you’ve just pointed at the gold standard.  (Boy…you don’t know how hard it was for a preacher to write/speak those words about needing less words!)

For You Today

In the matter of checking how deeply your roots are becoming grafted-in to the Master’s, start here:

          1.    Go over your checkbook to see where your stewardship has rooted

          2.    Look at this year’s calendar to see where your feet want to go

          3.    Ask…do I want to meditate on Scripture, or snap on the TV

          4.    Try to dredge up the last time you shared Christ with a perfect stranger

Those are only a few suggestions…but how the roots are progressing has a lot to do with the kind of soil in which they’re planted.  And as a Christian, you will never be fully-mature in Christ unless He has all of you…down to your root ball.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!  

[1] Title and Other Images:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

For another post on this theme see “Where Are You Going?”

 

Ready to Travel

[i]

Holy Week

Thursday, April 13, 2017

“These are your instructions for eating this meal:  Be fully dressed, wear your sandals, and carry your walking stick in your hand.  Eat the meal with urgency, for this is the Lord’s Passover.   Exodus 12:11^(NLT)

For I pass on to you what I received from the Lord himself.  On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took some bread and gave thanks to God for it.  Then he broke it in pieces and said, “This is my body, which is given for you.  Do this in remembrance of me.”  In the same way, he took the cup of wine after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant between God and his people—an agreement confirmed with my blood.  Do this in remembrance of me as often as you drink it.”  For every time you eat this bread and drink this cup, you are announcing the Lord’s death until he comes again.  1 Corinthians 11:23-26^(NLT)

Of all the people I’ve ever known, my Dad was the itchy feet king!  He was ready to travel at all times.  His wanderlust[ii] was born of a natural sense of curiosity about what’s beyond the next bend in the road.  He had an intense desire to see America, particularly the historical sights, up-close.  There was a map hung on a cork board in our house that had stick pins at places to which Mom and Dad had travelled over the years.  Strings were tied from one place to another, indicating a planned next trip, or a completed recent trip.  My Dad was always ready to travel!

Through Moses God told Israel the same thing; eat this meal with your shoes on and travelling sticks in hand; be ready to travel!  The Passover is the meal of haste, eaten with the understanding the call to move-out of Egypt might be trumpeted at any time. 

Our Lord’s Supper feast is also fast-food for the Christian church.  With this meal we remember the Passover of Jesus’ last night on earth and, much like the fundamental message of the Passover, where Jews remember the bitterness of bondage in Egypt, we remember the bitterness of sin’s bondage, from which we’ve been released.

There’s an urgency about this call to the table.  In one sense the grace we experience (or should experience) whenever we celebrate this communion is reason enough to hurry to the table.  Who is not in need of God’s grace, pressed-down, shaken-together, and running-over?[iii]

But there is also another reason to keep walking stick and sandals at the ready:  going home.  I recall those road trips with Mom and Dad, and how, because there was no money for motels, we camped.  My brother and I set up the tent every night, slept on the ground in sleeping bags, then broke it down and packed it in the station wagon every morning.  By the time the trip was over our parents had two pooped kids!  (Well, maybe that was their plan). 

But the best part of the trip…always…was arriving back at Holly Lane in Smithtown.  Coming back home, worn-out, full of travel memories, but home…HOME! 

The New Covenant is like that; starting place (in Christ) is also the destination.  Just like we drove away from the little house on Holly Lane on our new adventure the first two weeks of August every year, it was to the little house on Holly Lane we returned.  And it somehow looked different when we got back – so welcoming; so right.

We are walking pilgrims now, having started our journey with, and in-Christ.  The cross is the beginning of that pilgrimage, and we walk by faith towards a real place that is our real home, not one made with hands.  We start in Christ and are always moving towards Him.  The moments on this trail are filled with tests, trials, opportunities and some heartache as we see the tragedies and triumphs of the grandest experiment since creation – the making of a people who will love God and enjoy Him forever.

For You Today

Got your shoes on, walking stick in hand?  Are you ready for that?

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road…have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO

NOTES

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 ^I Title image: By MRabe! (Self-photographed), via Wikimedia Commons and By Hysocc (Own work), via Wikimedia Commons

[ii] “Wanderlust” is an intense desire to travel

[iii] Luke 6:38

Living in a Dumpster

[i]

Friday, July 15, 2016

There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female.  For you are all one in Christ Jesus.  Galatians 3:28^(NLT)

Separation, arguments, prejudice, unfairness; what a tangled existence we human beings create for each other.  When it comes to things that separate or divide people, the list is pretty long:

·       Race – that’s always a big one these days.

·       Lifestyle – there are messy people, clean people, fast and slow people; there are skinny people and generously piled “high and wide” people.

·       Language – Press one to continue in English

·       Region – I am one of the few “Yankee preachers” to ever have an ordination certificate signed by one Jefferson Davis!

·       Age – the young person complains the adults have it made, while the aged shake their heads in disdain over the way youth is wasted on the young.

·       Economics – the poor and rich seldom rub elbows.

·       Religion – Our creeds have created more different kinds of separation and distrust than 9/11.

·       Gender – there is a whole war going on to determine who has the power, or even if you will stay the gender you were born; whew!…tangled mess, indeed!

Separation…you stay over there, don’t get in my space!  Anger, contention, strife, games-playing, backbiting.  This is the stuff of which legalism is made.  This is what Jesus came to forgive…and what he expects us to forsake.

While the list of things that separate us is quite long, there is only a very short list of that which unites people.  There are two:  family and love.  That’s it…just family and love.  I tried to think of anything else that will truly unite people, and, other than accepting one another in this human family with love, there is nothing. 

In 2007 we added two rooms to our house so my Mom and Dad could live with us.  During the 8 month project there was an 8’x25’ dumpster next to the house full of scrap wood, shingles, discarded Pepsi bottles and sandwich wrappers. 

Other inhabitants included millions of fly larvae, mice and roaches, not to mention the odd family or two of black snakes.  (Don’t tell Elizabeth I said that!)

If I were to have asked Mom and Dad if they preferred to live in the new rooms or the dumpster, the only question would be if I have been drinking.  Nobody in his right mind lives in a dumpster if there’s a new house waiting. 

Yet, when it comes to living in faith, accepting others, we human beings would rather live in the “dumpster of separation” our prejudices and fears create, rather than the new rooms of joy Jesus is building for us.

For You Today

Paul calls to us to make a decision about the dumpster.  How do we live like Paul said – in Christ, with Christ living his life through our life?  It’s living together in love, in the faith family.  That’s what Jesus came to die for, that we might have a together life; we call it communion.  Sin separates us from God and each other.  Jesus came to break down the barriers that separate us, so that we can walk together. 

He came to tow away the dumpster of separation.  He’s building a new house full of love and family.  And there’s room for everybody!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road today…have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO

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NOTES

[i] Title Image: Russell Brownworth