Holding It Together

It is a phenomena seen many times by most of us.  Families are often held together by one strong person who seems to have patriarchal power, or matriarchal power, over the whole crowd of kindred DNA spirits.  And when they come to the end of their life, it is also not an uncommon things for a kind of disintegration to take place.  Traditional family gatherings cease because they are no longer present to see those events planned and done.  With the powerful center gone, it is like everyone who orbited around them spun out and into a distant land.

 

Such thoughts come to mind as we encounter those word of the Apostle Paul in the Christology section of the first chapter of Colossians.  In the 17th verse of that chapter, we hear the Word of God saying about Jesus, "He Himself is before all things, and in Him all things hold together."  At this point the Word of God goes beyond what John wrote in the Prologue to his gospel, "All things came into being through Him, and without Him not one thing came into being."  (John 1:3)  Paul goes beyond Jesus simply being the Creator of all things, but also the One who keeps everything that was made together and in order. 

 

What the Word of God is declaring to us is that the whole of the creation and every single part of it is dependent upon Jesus.  Without Him there would be a kind of universal chaos which would result in everything spinning out of control.  And in a like manner it can also be said that without Him the lives we live would move from order and purpose to confusion and chaos.  We can read the Word of God and come to this conclusion, or we can simply look back at the out of control moments of our own life.