Aren’t we hilarious? I mean, really. We say silly things like, “Time is of the essence.” “Time is money.” Time’s a wastin.’” “I don’t have time for that.” “What a colossal waste of time!” And all this ‘time’ we are no longer stuck in panic-stricken deadlines, no longer facing the date-time crunch, no longer in submission to the tyranny of clocks. We are peculiar human beings, guaranteed an eternity of abundance, provision, gifts, love, belonging and on and on. As God’s beloved, our new ‘home is his home. Our lifetime of investments; financial, relational, spiritual, and other, all only have worth when they are directed into kingdom-affirming pursuits. Our values have been re-negotiated up to a higher plane, a holy plane, a never-get-distracted plane. The New International Version has Paul saying in Ephesians 1:22,23: “ And God placed all things under (Jesus’) feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.” The MESSAGE has Paul saying this in those same verses: “(Jesus) is in charge of it all, has the final word on everything. At the center of all this, Christ rules the church. The church, you see, is not peripheral to the world; the world is peripheral to the church. The church is Christ’s body, in which he speaks and acts, by which he fills everything with his presence.”
One major upshot of this amazing story we find ourselves caught up in is that we can see, through the eyes of Jesus, how the world’s wrongs and ills and inequalities are to be made right and holy. It’s Jesus’ governing that will usher in the full expression of the righteousness of the Kingdom of God, not any ruling system made up of fallen, power-hungry, ego-driven, sinful, mankind. We, the Church, have open access to a higher supreme court than the Supreme Court here in the USA, or the UK, or France. Another sweet detail of our ‘in Christ’ life is that we can, in the midst of all the chaos, ‘be anxious for nothing’ (Philippians 4:6,7) as Paul exhorts us, not because we are escapists, but precisely because Jesus has the final word on everything and he is keenly aware of the global problems of our day, our ‘time.’ He’s spoken the truth we need. He shares it with his church, along with his power. And we know how his story (now our story!) turns out. And have you ever heard of a thing called Pentecost? PD
