Thought for the Day Friday 16 July

Colossians 2:9-10 (New Living Translation) For in Christ lives all the fullness of God in a human body. So you also are complete through your union with Christ, who is the head over every ruler and authority. (New Living Translation) The Epistle of Paul to the Colossians is the twelfth book of the New Testament. It was written, according to the text, by Paul the Apostle and Timothy, and addressed to the Church in Colossae, a small Phrygian city near Laodicea and approximately 100 miles from Ephesus.  It no longer exists as a city these days because it was destroyed in an earthquake in the first century a.d.  The nearest pace to it these days is a city in Turkey called Honaz.  At the time of Paul, it was a bustling city, well placed at the centre of many different trade routes. The letter was one of encouragement and caution.  Paul explained that the good news they had received and accepted ‘was now going out all over the world’.  He told them that all the time they were doing good things for others and accepting Jesus as their saviour, they will learn to know God more and more. The cautionary note came in the verse just before today’s reading when he wrote; ‘Don’t let anyone lead you astray with empty philosophy and high sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from the evil powers of this world, and not from Christ.’ I have heard preaching online and elsewhere where bible teaching is made complicated to the point that it becomes impossible to understand.  The information we have in the bible can be read by each and every one of us.  It is not written in big words that are difficult to understand.  It should never be added to by anyone whether they are scholars or not and nothing should ever be taken away or left out.  The bible repeatedly tells us all that we need to know in that Jesus is the head over every ruler and authority and everything we seek or need can be found in him.  Today’s reading is one of the portions of scripture where this is confirmed. Prayer Our Lord and our God, we thank you that you will always be there for us and all we have to do is accept you as our saviour and reach out to you.  As in Paul’s day, we must still try and get the good news out to others around us and others all over the world.  People seem to spend so much of their time reading some of the meaningless content on social media, we just pray that they might happen upon the ultimate good news in amongst all the other material and that might just be enough to start or restart them on the journey that leads to you.    Amen