Colossians 2:5-7 (NRSV)
For though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, and I rejoice to see your morale and the firmness of your faith in Christ. As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
I believe this reading fits us quite well. As a matter of fact, I think we could go back to the first verse of this chapter where Paul laments in his struggle for those who have not seen him face-to-face. This is our here and now. This is our struggle.
It is so difficult not to be face-to-face. To not be able to get to know you through greetings on Sunday mornings or through visits at various ministry team events. Or just seeing each other through daily encounters. You may have seen me in line at a restaurant drive-thru or tooling by you in my blue/green Ford Escape on the roadway. We may have even encountered each other walking down the sidewalk without knowing it.
It is difficult not to be face-to-face. But it’s also a comfort to take Paul’s words to heart, “For though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, and I rejoice to see your morale and the firmness of your faith in Christ.” This Thanksgiving we may be apart from our family, friends, and fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, but we are with one another in the spirit, and there is nothing that can ever separate us from God’s love. Realizing this, we come to understand that in God’s love there is nothing that can separate us who are under this divine love from one another. We are bound together in God’s love by the Holy Spirit. In this we can abound in thanksgiving!
Let us pray. Loving Lord, unite us in your love, that though we may be separated, we are bound to one another by your love and by your Holy Spirit. For this we are thankful. Amen.
In Christ’s Love,
Pastor Tim
