next door

Wednesday July 28th, Colossians 2: 11-15 Entering into this fullness is not something you figure out or achieve. It's not a matter of being circumcised or keeping a long list of laws. No, you're already in—insiders—not through some secretive initiation rite but rather through what Christ has already gone through for you, destroying the power of sin. If it's an initiation ritual you're after, you've already been through it by submitting to baptism. Going under the water was a burial of your old life; coming up out of it was a resurrection, God raising you from the dead as he did Christ. Being in Christ is “Being” in Christ. Sometimes it may seem that the work the Church is keeping the in people in and the out people, who may be different from the in people, out, but that is not Church as in the body of Christ, but rather church as in Big business in a little pond. As Christians we are not ruled by the rule of Law but by the rule of Grace. Love one another as I have loved you is the way Jesus puts it. We ask the question, Who is the other? Jesus answers with stories like the good Samaritan and asks us for the obvious answer. Christ raised you from your dead lives to a life in Christ and simply asks you to go and bring this message that the Kingdom is near, in your heart, in your mind, in your life, to the least lost and lonely in this world. They often live right next door.