God's Story & Ours

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To God's holy people in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. (Ephesians 1:1-3) While we've kept the music and graphics the same, we're going to start in on a new series this week that hopefully connects well with our 1 Samuel series.  The theme for both being this idea of growing up to maturity in Christ.   It's interesting that in each of these first four verses of the letter, God the Father and Jesus Christ the Son are both mentioned.  Four times each alongside various references to God's people.  God's will is active, God's people are responsive.  Jesus's grace and peace are flowing, as are his blessings, and again, we his people respond in praise. Throughout the letter of Ephesians, Paul is constantly knitting together the smaller stories of our own lives with the larger, universal, eternal story of God's work in Christ.  To become mature is a continual work of seeking to see God's story in and as our own. Of course, in the day-to-day grind that can be a challenge.  We have jobs to do, children to raise, parents to care after, errands to run, books to read, shows to watch, notifications to chase, leaves to rake, food to prepare, and garbage to take out.  These are all things that we can do on our own seemingly without God's help or counsel, and so we usually do.     It often takes something like an accident, diagnosis, or death to jar us out of the ordinary and into pondering what God's up to beyond the flow of our hours and weeks.  In those moments, we're caught looking toward the heavenly realms to be reminded of just what those spiritual blessings were that we received in Christ.  We seek to be reminded of the bigger story we've been caught up in, a story that goes beyond just our own work, family, and food.   That's the story Paul's writing about as he begins this letter to the Ephesians.  He's talking about the cosmic actions and decisions of God that span from before the creation of the world until the times reach their fulfillment.  He's talking about not just individuals, but every individual that ever was or will be—nations, peoples, cultures, and continents.   It is a story of the entirety of the Earthly Creation, all of which will be brought to unity together with every heavenly thing under Christ.  It is the story of how heaven and earth meet—how God's realm and ours are reconciled together into one through Christ.   Whether in the ordinary moments of grinding out the days, or in those exceptional moments where the carpet has been pulled from under us—this larger story of God in Christ is always the background of our own.  Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ that it is, for it is in this story that we find the meaning, hope, and faith that can sustain our own.