This past week the City of Middleton held its grand 4th of July parade. It is one of the best parades in the Treasure Valley and is always well attended. This year our church, CFC Middleton, had both a float in the parade and a booth at the park.
Many volunteers showed up to decorate and ride the float, and to man the booth and pray for people. I would have loved to have been part of all that … and in times past I would have been! But, the body will no longer cooperate with those types of events. I sure would have loved to be included.
There are many things that I can no longer do. I politely decline, sometimes explain, all the while my heart desires to be there. Maybe that is why when reading in Colossians Chapter 1 this week, I was so touched by Paul’s passage that describes God’s reconciliation with everything in heaven and on earth.
“For God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ, and through him God reconciled everything to Himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ’s blood on the cross. This includes you who were once far away from God. You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault.” [Colossians 1:19-22 NLT]
See that little phrase? “This includes you who were once far from God.”
I may “age out” of a lot of things on this earth. But I, once an enemy of God and separated from him by my evil thoughts and actions, am now included in the reconciliation He Himself accomplished through Christ Jesus. I will never age out of that. Amen! Hallelujah!
