It was a great Christmas party. Our national staff and several local staff members who were in Denver for training and vision casting joined together for a time of celebration. After everyone had left, Mary and I were cleaning up a few final dishes in the kitchen and I offered to clean the two coffee pots that I had been responsible to fill a few hours before.
When I pulled the first pot to the sink I was surprised by the weight of the urn. It felt amazingly heavy. When I removed the cover of the 60-cup percolator I answered the question that the unexpected weight had created. Everything, the ground coffee, the clean clear water in the bottom, were exactly as they had been when I completed filling it. Nothing, absolutely thing, had changed in the condition of the ingredients. I had placed the urn at the end of a table in the reception hall and determined
that part way through dinner I would plug it in to make an appropriately fresh pot for consumption with dessert. But the cord never got connected, and consequently, all of the perfectly placed, accurately measured, and correctly assembled pieces meant nothing.
“…faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” ~ James 2:17 (ESV)
Throughout the preparation for “the party,” we assemble experiences, knowledge, resources, relationships and dreams. We can even have them in the proper place at the perfect time… but that’s not enough. I know. It takes the connection to the power source, to the transforming agent.
For in Christ lives all the fullness of God in a human body. So you also are complete through your union with Christ, ~ Colossians 2:9,10 (NLT)
In relationship with Christ, we, you and I, become complete. We become a perfectly brewed cup of coffee, for distribution, enjoyment, celebration and warmth. Christ makes every ingredient in our lives come together in unity and significance.
We become what we were intended to become… complete, in and through Him, for the good purposes He planned for us before the foundations of the earth.
“Exactly as we had been… or transformed?”
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