“Let your daily actions witness: Christ will come again” - Day 5

Colossians 3:15

“Let your daily actions witness: Christ will come again”

 15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. 

The Peace of Christ – we hear this as being a personal peace. The peace of knowing we are at peace with God, the peace of knowing we are forgiven by the love and grace of Jesus Christ, the peace of being able to make it through the storms of life. This peace is a promised gift from God, which brings a calm and serenity to our lives. It is very important, and should not be overlooked.

But the words after the comma lead us to think more deeply about the peace of Christ, for here the peace of Christ is to be lived within the body of Christ, the church. Within the church there is struggle and conflict, cliques and sub-groups. These groups, these tensions do not bear witness to the meekness and humility that are to be marks of the faith community. Paul in another places invites us to not think of ourselves more highly than we ought to. Ego, more often than we like to admit, is at the center of our conflict with others. To live at peace with others means learning to push ego and self-interest aside and find the peace that God desires for the body of Christ.

“And be thankful.” Thankfulness and gratitude appear throughout this passage (here, v. 16 and v. 17), but located right here may offer a way to find peace within the body of the church. Can we be thankful for being in the same church with those people we find difficult to be with? Can we each day be thankful for the people in the church who think differently than we do? If we learn to be thankful for them, maybe there is the starting place on the path to peace. When Christ comes again, we will be spending eternity with these frustrating people, we might as well learn to be thankful for them now.  

PRAYER:

God of peace, you sent Jesus the Prince of Peace the first time, we look forward to his coming again. Shape our lives each day into the patterns of his coming reign that we may bear witness to his peaceable kingdom. In Jesus’ name. Amen.