Word for the day by Christian Education Forum
Be Encouraged
Rekha Daniel
Colorado Horeb MTC
4 just as he chose us in
Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before
him in love.
Greetings to the churches founded by St. Thomas who was called to be an apostle by Jesus Christ and God the Father. This is similar to how Paul starts each of his letters in the Bible. Paul states in Ephesians 1:4 “Even before the world was made, God had already chosen us to be his through our union with Christ, so that we would be holy and without fault before him.”
Shout it from the mountain tops! I was freed from my sins and made free! Who is Paul referring to when he says “us” and “we”? Could I be considered the same type of Christian as those whose families were born and brought up here for generations and generations? Makes me wonder when folks ask me what kind of Christian I am and how our church in India was founded.
In the Good News translation of Ephesians 2:11-13 we read:
11 You Gentiles by birth—called “the uncircumcised” by the Jews, who call themselves the circumcised (which refers to what men do to their bodies)—remember what you were in the past. 12 At that time you were apart from Christ. You were foreigners and did not belong to God's chosen people. You had no part in the covenants, which were based on God's promises to his people, and you lived in this world without hope and without God.13 But now, in union with Christ Jesus you, who used to be far away, have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
We see through this passage that Paul was addressing Gentiles or non-Jewish Christian believers. He wanted this group to be encouraged as they had not previously be included in “God’s chosen people” or at least not viewed as such by Jews at that time.
Paul’s message was that Christianity is not bound by ethnicity and this is important for our Mar Thoma community today. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is filled with reminders that God’s kingdom is open to all those who put their faith and trust in Him. The color of our skin and traditions passed down from our immigrant parents don’t weed us out from God’s kingdom as long it is all geared towards the flourishing of God’s kingdom.
So then this was all planned by HIM long before he breathed us into life and long before we his people drew our own lines in the sand of who belongs to him and who doesn’t. He asks only one thing. Not that we all dress alike or that we all be perfect in all we do. He asks only that we have faith in his message of love and that in having that faith, all other commands will fall into place.
As we whose church was founded by The Doubting Apostle, isn’t it funny how often we find ourselves wondering if we made the right decision to plant ourselves and our church here in the US? How oppressed we feel as a minority? If only we all could be as encouraged and encouraging as Paul who may have been writing these letters from a prison cell. Are we not all in our own prison’s of sorts, whether we built those prisons ourselves through decisions we made without consultation from the Maker or whether by circumstances beyond our earthly control placed us in a state of detention?
We may feel as though the sky is falling, war will never end, broken bonds will never mend, or that illness is spreading like wildfire around us, but God has a plan in place that will supercede all the evils of the world and all the divisions among his people.
Greetings to the churches founded by St. Thomas who was called to be an apostle by Jesus Christ and God the Father. This is similar to how Paul starts each of his letters in the Bible. Paul states in Ephesians 1:4 “Even before the world was made, God had already chosen us to be his through our union with Christ, so that we would be holy and without fault before him.”
Shout it from the mountain tops! I was freed from my sins and made free! Who is Paul referring to when he says “us” and “we”? Could I be considered the same type of Christian as those whose families were born and brought up here for generations and generations? Makes me wonder when folks ask me what kind of Christian I am and how our church in India was founded.
In the Good News translation of Ephesians 2:11-13 we read:
11 You Gentiles by birth—called “the uncircumcised” by the Jews, who call themselves the circumcised (which refers to what men do to their bodies)—remember what you were in the past. 12 At that time you were apart from Christ. You were foreigners and did not belong to God's chosen people. You had no part in the covenants, which were based on God's promises to his people, and you lived in this world without hope and without God.13 But now, in union with Christ Jesus you, who used to be far away, have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
We see through this passage that Paul was addressing Gentiles or non-Jewish Christian believers. He wanted this group to be encouraged as they had not previously be included in “God’s chosen people” or at least not viewed as such by Jews at that time.
Paul’s message was that Christianity is not bound by ethnicity and this is important for our Mar Thoma community today. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is filled with reminders that God’s kingdom is open to all those who put their faith and trust in Him. The color of our skin and traditions passed down from our immigrant parents don’t weed us out from God’s kingdom as long it is all geared towards the flourishing of God’s kingdom.
So then this was all planned by HIM long before he breathed us into life and long before we his people drew our own lines in the sand of who belongs to him and who doesn’t. He asks only one thing. Not that we all dress alike or that we all be perfect in all we do. He asks only that we have faith in his message of love and that in having that faith, all other commands will fall into place.
As we whose church was founded by The Doubting Apostle, isn’t it funny how often we find ourselves wondering if we made the right decision to plant ourselves and our church here in the US? How oppressed we feel as a minority? If only we all could be as encouraged and encouraging as Paul who may have been writing these letters from a prison cell. Are we not all in our own prison’s of sorts, whether we built those prisons ourselves through decisions we made without consultation from the Maker or whether by circumstances beyond our earthly control placed us in a state of detention?
We may feel as though the sky is falling, war will never end, broken bonds will never mend, or that illness is spreading like wildfire around us, but God has a plan in place that will supercede all the evils of the world and all the divisions among his people.
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