Growing up in Texas, it was my boyhood dream that one day we'd discover oil in our backyard. The idea that we might be sitting on something that would catapult us into riches and we didn't even know it was a possibility too wonderful to ignore.And so this invitation to abide, to drill down into Christ, is the invitation to riches unfathomable. To put our roots down into a deep and glorious place where all the treasures of wisdom and peace and power and beauty and purpose are stored.
What Paul is telling us in Ephesians 1 is that most of us as Christians are sitting on riches unfathomable without even knowing it.
We're going to put roots down somewhere, into something. Lent (which kicked off yesterday) is a time to search our hearts and examine where our roots are sunk down. It's an invitation to re-direct our roots into Life.
Most of us are scurrying around, trying to find safe places--a safe place to put our money, a safe place to put our hearts, a safe place to work where the job will still be there tomorrow, a safe place to live, a safe place to send our kids to school.
But the point is that after the fall, here in the Land of the Ruins, there are no safe places. And besides all that, since our desires are corrupted by the ruins, what we call "safe" and the motives with which we pursue "safety" are all jacked up anyway.
To borrow from C.S. Lewis: even Jesus is not safe. But he is good. Infinitely good.
"Abide in me, here in the Land of the Ruins. And your life will be fruitful. My joy in you, and your joy complete. Apart from me you can do nothing that lasts, because here in this place death and sin are still at work to corrode and destroy everything. But it shall not always be so. It is not so where I am, and where my Father is--there, it is all glory. Let that life be at work in you. This is what you were made for."
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