God of this day and all days, bless and protect the life and challenges of this dear reader; in Christ Jesus I pray, amen.
As we prepare for the celebration of Epiphany, let's look at this text for today, from Ephesians 3: 1 This is why I, Paul, am in jail for Christ, having taken up the cause of you outsiders, so-called. 2 I take it that you're familiar with the part I was given in God's plan for including everybody. 3 I got the inside story on this from God himself, as I just wrote you in brief. 4 As you read over what I have written to you, you'll be able to see for yourselves into the mystery of Christ. 5 None of our ancestors understood this. Only in our time has it been made clear by God's Spirit through his holy apostles and prophets of this new order. 6 The mystery is that people who have never heard of God and those who have heard of him all their lives (what I've been calling outsiders and insiders) stand on the same ground before God. They get the same offer, same help, same promises in Christ Jesus. The Message is accessible and welcoming to everyone, across the board. 7 This is my life work: helping people understand and respond to this Message. It came as a sheer gift to me, a real surprise, God handling all the details. 8 When it came to presenting the Message to people who had no background in God's way, I was the least qualified of any of the available Christians. God saw to it that I was equipped, but you can be sure that it had nothing to do with my natural abilities. 9 My task is to bring out in the open and make plain what God, who created all this in the first place, has been doing in secret and behind the scenes all along. 10 Through Christians like yourselves gathered in churches, this extraordinary plan of God is becoming known and talked about even among the angels! 11 All this is proceeding along lines planned all along by God and then executed in Christ Jesus. 12 When we trust in him, we're free to say whatever needs to be said, bold to go wherever we need to go.
I don't know about you, but I've been an "outsider" at several points in my life. My having to move from the small town of Kingsville to the huge metropolis of Houston in the mid-60s, made me an outsider at the junior high that I attended. I suppose moving in the early part of the fall of your 7th grade year is not as bad as moving in your junior year of high school as one of my daughters had to endure, but it was bad enough. I had to ride the city bus from our street to the school, and once at the school had to figure out where to wait for the bell to ring. In this school's case it was to wait on the football field behind the school. It was probably the second day that a terrible fog had moved in to Houston and it was fun and scary to find the football field and then await the ringing of the bell for our first class. Epiphany celebrates what the Church calls the sharing of the Gospel with "insiders" and "outsiders" alike. Today's text has Paul sharing how God used him, though he felt like "the least qualified of any available Christians" to help bring in the "outsiders." The more known word is Gentiles for those whom this version calls "outsiders," and Paul was the evangelist who took the Gospel from inside the Jewish realm to all people. And Paul says this was planned all along, God desires you and me to be in God's love and reign.
Notice how Paul closes this passage, "When we trust in him (Christ Jesus), we're free to say whatever needs to be said, bold to go wherever we need to go." May it be so in our lives especially as we start the New Year, for there's much yet to be done.
PRAYER: Loving God, help me to be Your servant to those "in" and "out" of your love and reign. I thank You for inviting me in, and using all Whom you used to reach me. Let me reach others; I ask this in Christ Jesus' precious and powerful name, amen.
Have a great and blessed day in the Lord!
Eradio Valverde
