I used to have a job I hated. It was awful.
It was the kind of awful that people talk about when they’re exaggerating the semi-awfulness of their own jobs.
Only I never exaggerated it. Actually, I used to downplay it. I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe because I was ashamed to be there.
And then I would come across passages like the one in Ephesians where Paul is telling us to respectfully obey our bosses, and not just drudgingly, but with a smile on our face.
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Our country just hired a new President. And, up until three weeks before the election, I had this feeling Trump was going to be it. (Caveat: I voted for Evan McMullin.)
And then, three weeks out, I wasn’t so sure any more. Some scandal from one of the candidates finally pulled me in. And I started reading election articles, and not ignoring all those Facebook posts, and on and on.
When election day came, I was genuinely miffed. I didn’t have a clue anymore.
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This is the nature of details. When you’re in the foliage, everything and nothing looks like the path.
Early in Ephesians Paul writes these great lines:
All this energy issues from Christ: God raised him from death and set him on a throne in deep heaven.
In charge of running the universe, everything from galaxies to governments, no name and no power exempt from his rule.
And not just for the time being, but forever.
He is in charge of it all, has the final word on everything. At the center of all this, Christ rules the church.
The church, you see, is not peripheral to the world; the world is peripheral to the church.
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Here it is.
There’s no way we can make sense of the mess while we’re in it.
We have to be anchored to something—something that will help us make senses of it once we’re out of the mess.
The question is not: “how can we better examine this mess?”
The real question is: how well are we–are you–tied to the anchor?
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