Fullness

Colossians continues to bless me (see yesterday's post...)

This morning's words, taken from The Message paraphrase, are marching orders worth following, plain and simple -- from Colossians 2:6-10 ~

My counsel for you is simple and straightforward: Just go ahead with what you've been given. You received Christ Jesus, the Master; now live him. You're deeply rooted in him. You're well constructed upon him. You know your way around the faith. Now do what you've been taught. School's out; quit studying the subject and start living it! And let your living spill over into thanksgiving.

Watch out for people who try to dazzle you with big words and intellectual double-talk. They want to drag you off into endless arguments that never amount to anything. They spread their ideas through the empty traditions of human beings and the empty superstitions of spirit beings. But that's not the way of Christ. Everything of God gets expressed in him, so you can see and hear him clearly. You don't need a telescope, a microscope, or a horoscope to realize the fullness of Christ, and the emptiness of the universe without him. When you come to him, that fullness comes together for you, too. His power extends over everything.

So often people will ask, in the form of a greeting, "How's it going?" Rather than list off the various tasks that lay ahead of me for the day or the week, how great it would be if I just said, "Fully living."

Sure, that's pretty random. But when we camp on that concept, that reality, of fullness, it makes sense. Warren Wiersbe, the Bible commentator, says "fullness" is "the sum total of all that God is, all of His being and attributes." The great gift is that we share in this fullness, in a reliable, permanent way. One commentator translated verse 10 in this way:

And you are in Him, having been completely filled full with the present result that you are in a state of fullness.

THAT is good news. THAT is permanence of the best kind. Camp on that today and look at your life through that lens. Everything shifts into proper perspective.