Blog # 332 Whatever you do...

Blog # 332  Whatever you do...

            "Whatever  you do, whether in speech or in action, do it in the name of the Lord Jesus."  (Col. 3: 17).  Yesterday morning when I was reflecting upon this particular verse of Scripture it occurred to me to imagine something of the meaning of what the author was saying by way of comparing his thought with the identity of fire.

                A characteristic of fire is that it is hot, and whatever fire touches shares the heat of the fire, becoming hot like the fire itself.  Then, whatever has been heated by the fire, shares its heat in turn with whatever it will touch.   When whatever has been warmed by the fire begins to cool it can be heated  again by contact with the fire.  Isn't it something like this with regard to our identity as Christian believers and our contact with Jesus?

               Jesus is the 'original' Christian as fire is a source of heat.  Our identity as Christian believers is that we have been 'touched'  through God's grace with the love of  God in Jesus.  In this experience we are not only  made to be like Jesus as a picture of fire resembles fire in its color and physical appearance.  Rather we are like Jesus by way of actually sharing the mind, attitude, and Spirit of Jesus as an object touching fire actually makes some of the heat of the fire its very own.  And as an object warmed by fire is capable of warming other objects placed in contact with it, though in itself it is not the fire, so we who have been 'born from above' (Jn. 3:3)  and have so become a 'new creation'  in Christ ( 2 Cor. 5: 17)  are qualified and called, through the love God shares with us to share God's love with those around us.

              And this is to be true in "whatever we do, in speech or in action (Col. 3:17 above).  I wonder how many people realize this truth in the sense of understanding it, and then secondly realize it in the sense of making it real in their lives, in speech and action.  As members of His Body the Church by Baptism we are qualified and called not merely to imitate the example of Jesus, but to share it by living it in union with Jesus in hope those around us will be warmed by the 'flame' of the Spirit in us and seek the Baptismal gift we have shared with them.
( cf Jn. 17 20-23;  Mt. 10: 40;  Jn. 15: 1-5;  Gal. 2:20;  Rom. 64;  2 Cpr.5:17;  Col. 2:13 ).