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Things have changed a lot since I was in high school. Maybe you feel that way too? Perhaps the most significant change we face, along with our students, is technology, right? My Walkman cassette player of the 80’s pales in comparison to the almighty iPhone. Perhaps the speed of technology has us running around the rim trying to connect, as Nouwen put it in the above quote. On the other hand, what hasn't changed but is challenged greatly is the most powerful driving influence in our students' lives, maybe ours too - relationships: siblings, parents, teachers, coaches, friends, and God. Judging by the news, we are having relationship challenges at every level in today’s world, including the catastrophe of wars.
I believe God, family, and community are the last safe harbors today. Looking back, I can remember the power of relationships with family, friends, and others that God used to mentor me along the way in my life. Can you? These especially included teachers and coaches. I was blessed to be raised in a Christian home and attend a small Lutheran High School in Denver. In hindsight, the Lord used all of these relationships to help strengthen my faith in my journey as a Christian.
God works through others in a powerful way; always has. Consider all of the wonderful stories in the Bible. Look at how Moses was mentored by his father-in-law, Jethro, who trained him to be the great leader and man of faith he ultimately became. In the New Testament, we see how Paul mentored the new Christians at Philippi, writing to them, “Practice what you’ve learned and received from me, what you heard and saw me do.” These are just a few of the many mentoring relationships in the Bible.
Today's devotional verses are Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians. This section is a prayer to build community, to know Christ better, and to increase their spiritual strength. Paul’s prayer was a confident but humble [he was on his knees] prayer. Paul encourages unity and values a nested Christian community, where Christ dwells and comfortably dwells in our hearts through Spirit-worked faith. The Greek word ‘to dwell’ carries the idea of permanence - to take up residence and live there forever.
Paul continues to describe this nested community -- church? school? home? -- to be “rooted and established in love.” Rooted gives a picture of being deeply embedded, and established suggests a solid bedrock always holding firm, having love for one another and love for God. Loving and striving to understand together is essential for all God’s people. Some translations say, “may be able to comprehend [the love of Jesus] with all the saints;'' I like that version better…okay, so it happens to be our mascot name, too.
Paul asks the Lord in this prayer while being rooted in love to have us grasp the love of Christ. Then, he describes how the love of Christ is complex with many dimensions. To know this love is beyond any knowledge we may have; it’s beyond what we can know or fathom. God’s love is wide enough to include everybody. God’s love is long enough to last forever, all eternity. God’s love is deep enough to reach into the darkest depths of the world for the worst of sinners, and God’s love is high enough to lift us beyond this world to heaven.
Even though this power-packed prayer for the Ephesians is already so loaded with good stuff, Paul’s not finished yet. Paul asks God to fill us up! Our Christian life is to be filled to capacity with the fullness of Christ. While there are many things this world offers us on which to “fill up,” Jesus is not one of those things. Paul says that God is a great thing with which to be filled. Our God is able to do far more than we can even ask or dream about asking.
Paul closes his prayer with a doxology, reminding us that God far exceeds all that we could ever ask or imagine according to His power that is at work within us. He gives glory to Christ for all eternity. I pray that each of our Saints’ families continue to pray Paul’s prayer and are rooted and established in the love of Christ as He dwells in your homes and hearts. Let’s not forget to start in the solitude in listening to God - in the hub. May we live in the hub together in faith, Saints. Amen.
Let’s pray:
Lord, help us to pray like Paul, “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”
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