Acts 17:11
Consider this
“For this I toil,” Paul says in Colossians 1:29, “struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.” Paul’s paradox of strenuously contending or striving for the faith, and yet fully relying on Christ to supply the power to contend, is at the heart of this song.
In the same breath that Paul tells the Colossians to let the Word of Christ dwell in them richly, he tells the Colossians to sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs (3:16). Consider the endless source of songwriting material that will never be extinguished!
In November, a single woman in her mid-30s wrote to a columnist for the online magazine “The Cut” seeking direction for picking up the pieces of her life. “No one knows who I am or where I’ve been,” she wrote, calling herself “Haunted” in her signature…
It’s American culture, especially, to have a Puritanical or Protestant work-ethic. It’s a documented phenomenon and it’s a main contribution to why, even to this day, Americans work slavishly to fulfill the towers they set out to build. Yes, it involves ego and envy and greed, but it also has in it a noble goal to achieve and avoid sagging rafters and leaky houses.
If you are a follower of Jesus, you are invited into the great responsibility of shepherding others into the truth and mystery of our God come to die and live again. It’s the core of everything we do, everything we are. Paul says in I Corinthians 15:14, “And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith”.
