All Things Through Christ

 DAILY READING

1 Corinthians 8: 4-6

REFLECTION

A Prayer About Creation and Restoration

by Dan Kidd

I have a friend who has a genuine phobia of stickers. Stickers adhere to almost everything; which means that almost everything can adhere to a sticker. When my friend sees a sticker anywhere but on the sheet it is packaged in, she sees contamination of all sorts. Whatever germs and grime these stickers have touched can now be transmitted to anyone the sticker touches. Stickers and sterility are mortal enemies. 

Yes, this is an extreme and disruptive position. But, in fairness, exposure to germs and bacteria can harm and kill us. Ask any surgeon or immunocompromised person about the importance of rigorous sanitation and the consequences otherwise.

It’s clear to us that the Israelites recognized the importance of purity and the corruption of contamination—in both the physical and spiritual sense (though I suspect they would counsel us that those aren’t meaningful distinctions). The Torah is replete with instructions for avoiding, identifying, and responding to contamination. They knew well that God created a good world full of wonderful, healthy things, but that these things can spoil, sour, and metastasize. This is the context into which Paul is writing to the Corinthian church. This new Christian church, as they looked to the wisdom of the Old Testament, saw how profoundly God’s people had guarded themselves against corruption. As loyal disciples, they wanted to protect themselves from being corrupted by refusing to eat meat that had been sacrificed to the gods around them (which was essentially every last bit of meat they would find in the market). This is not unreasonable.

But Paul has more great news to share with them about the power of Jesus. Christ has the ability to take old, spoiled, corrupted, and even dead things and make them new, vital, good, and alive again. Christ’s power to transform makes a profound difference in the way we engage with the world around us. The power of Christ offers a new, profound liberty. The guardedness against corruption that had once pervaded the Israelites’ sensibilities was no longer as necessary. This new power provides disciples with the opportunity to live, not out of fear, but out of confidence and trust in Christ. Not only was Jesus there at the creation of all things, he was and is recreating and restoring all things back to right. In essence, the enemy’s poison has been thwarted by Jesus, the antidote.

There is, confesses Paul, only one God and only one Lord, and he is the originator of all things. This word offers us liberation from a fearful, defensive posture towards the power of the enemy. Does this mean we are reckless or flippant about being led astray or poisoned by the enemy? No. But Jesus offers to free us from debilitating anxieties over what can corrupt us and empowers us to seek and embrace what is good, restored, and redeemed. 

PRAYER PRACTICE 

Because of Christ, we can pray this: Father God, thank you for creating all things! Jesus, thank you for re-creating all things! Grant me the trust and confidence to embrace your power and work and to marvel at your creation and restoration.