In my job, I and my colleagues would frequently want to do a pile of photocopying at the last minute. Above the photocopier there was a notice that said "Never let a machine know you are in a hurry". More often than seemed fair, the more in a hurry you were, the more likely something nasty would happen to the machine to make you wait! It was a mystery! It did seem to know!
Sometimes life can feel like that – days when everything seems to go wrong, or whole periods in our lives seem out of gear. Is God punishing me for something? What is going wrong?
In our readings shown below we see that struggle with what happens in our daily lives and what we think we know of God. In Jeremiah's reading are these very sad and well-known words.
"The harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we are not saved."
Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people? Jeremiah 8:20 and 22
The Jews were in real trouble as their inevitable defeat drew closer and Jeremiah pondered the mystery of justice and mercy. But in Paul's world that mystery is an open secret revealed by God Himself! The same mystery that Jeremiah wrestled with: trying to reconcile God's love and God's justice, Paul lays bare, explaining it to the Colossians like this.
Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behaviour. But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight Col 1:21 & 22
The mystery of God's justice being satisfied is in the wonderful grace shown by God in sending Jesus to battle evil on our behalf and so reconcile all things to God (Col 1:20).
If today you feel that things are still a mystery, Paul tells us that the solution is to continue in your faith. However things may seem, it isn't so! Evil exists, but it is beaten; life seems a pig, but Jesus has the victory. (And that photocopier is just a machine!) Keep established in your faith, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel (Col 1:23)
Alan Cartwright
Read the Bible in a year: Psalm 116:12-19, Jeremiah 7:30- 9:16, Colossians 1:1-23
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