It was the Apostle
Paul’s ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known and he had already
preached from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum. Paul wrote in Romans, “But
now that there is no more place for me to work in these regions…”
(Ro 15:23a NIV). The United States is a Christian nation and I’m now trying to
wrap my head around Paul telling my local community that there is no more place
for him to work in this region.
1 comment:
Gail;
-----As individuals, we are all bits and pieces. I don’t mean that to sound like we are all broken into bits and pieces, although some of us are (my dad is missing a finger, my mom, two, many others are missing more, and I‘m missing at least a couple marbles.) We so hate to be thought of as cogs in a machine. But we are just that. Everything in this physical universe is a cog in the machine. Every kind of creature has its function of transforming molecular structures from one form to another, each transformation making something useful for another life form. So vast and complex is this machine of life that entire species have died out, and yet it lumbers on, not hardly like it doesn’t miss them though, but onward it continues to lumber with maybe a bit more of a limp.
-----And as individuals we are cogs in the machinery of our species. Each of us adds a bit and subtracts a bit from the overall culture around us. Each adds and subtracts a bit from the provisions our species needs to carry on, physical provisions, intellectual and emotional provisions, and spiritual provisions. God has created each of us for a purpose.
-----I estimate one of the major reasons we hate being cogs in a machine is because it diminishes our ability to hold whatever meaning about life we choose, and therefore, whatever place in it we want. The Western world has taught us the stone cold truth about biological and chemical machinery. But it has come to deny the spiritual machinery thriving and warring behind the veil the molecular, physical world is to our senses. In a big part this spiritual existence is made out of meaning, because meaning extends from how things relate with each other and with everything, and why they relate in that way. Therefore, the state of being itself offers a nonmalleable meaning of itself. That meaning is what it is as all pieces of it relate to all other pieces in the way they relate.
-----It is God’s mind which knows every bit and piece of not only this physical existence, but also of the spiritual existence He also has created, and all other existences He has created or ever will create, and how everything of every one of them interrelates, with each other and to Him, defining Him as God. Therefore, this physical existence is what it is, everything He has created is what it is, God is what He is, and all things have a proper meaning that is what it is which His mind knows, and a bit of which He has revealed to us.
-----We each develop some meaning on our own because He created us with free will. So we choose things to do and places in which to do them that differ from what others choose, and even differing from what other things we might have chosen instead. So it is not like we are each, one the addendum, another the dedendum, another the top land of a gear cog surface in a Swiss watch, and yet another the bottom land between two cogs. Set aside the old philosophical debate between determinism and free-will and just notice that we all effect what goes on around us and that effects existence.
-----Paul was cut for his meaning in God’s all. Paul’s place was in the shaping of the basic nature of Christ’s body on earth, though he did it in uniquely Pauline fashion. His function was so particular that God revealed instruction, knowledge, and wisdom for His church through Paul, because his fashion was righteously obedient. That Paul was finished preaching in an area was only that Paul was finished. The rest of us cogs yet have preaching and representing to do. It’s just the nature of the machine and the meaning of Christ’s living body on earth.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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