Tuesday: In All These Things
WEEK 28
TUESDAY
IN ALL THESE THINGS
Colossians 1:11-14
We have seen that a new hope arose in human hearts with the impact of Jesus upon human spirits and thought. What produced it?
A. N. Whitehead gives a penetrating word: “I hazard the prophecy that that religion will conquer which can render clear to popular understanding some eternal greatness incarnate in the passage of temporal fact.”* “Some eternal greatness incarnate in the passage of temporal fact”; that was fulfilled in the greatest temporal fact that has ever been seen in our world, the incarnation of God in Jesus.
That incarnation took place at a definite point in history in a definite person with a definite body. “The Word became flesh.” This coming of the Divine into human manifestation tells humanity that salvation is not release from mundane existence but victory and release in the midst of mundane living. Persons and the time process itself can be redeemed in the midst of this world and its processes. Salvation was not escape; it was victory in and through human living as it now is and shall be.
The verses that most vividly show this are these:
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? . . . No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom 8:35-39 RSV)
In this sweeping passage is the secret in this one phrase: “in all these things.” Note the “in.” Every other system used other prepositions: “apart from” (Hinduism), “beyond” (Buddhism), “above” (Greek philosophy). Only the Christian faith said “in.” Why? Because the incarnation was “in”—not “apart from” or “beyond,” or “above”—it was “in.” The victory had been wrought within the time process and over the time process and through the time process. It was a victory wrought out in life, and all life began to live!
O Jesus, wherever your feet have trod, flowers spring up in barren places; and hope is born within us with your coming. You are Life, Life, Life. We thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: My victory today shall be Jesus. So no escapism, no trying to check out of problems.
* Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (New York: The Free Press, 1933), 33.