Blogging through Romans is one of the interesting projects I’ve embarked on. I love it, love Paul’s thinking. The Gospels are like a primary text. A child can understand them.
Romans is like a meta-text, literary criticism, analysis.
I love thinking it through with Paul.
Romans 1:21
21 For although they knew God,
they neither glorified him as God
nor gave thanks to him,
but their thinking became futile
and their foolish hearts were darkened.
22Although they claimed to be wise,
they became fools
First things first.
If one neither honours God, nor gives thanks to him, one lives a life without taking the brilliant creator of life into account.
So one’s thinking lacks vital parts of the equation–the Creator, and the ultimate end of our existence. Leaving these vital elements out of the plot and equation of life–the creator, the preserver, the one who can transform our life, the ocean in which the sun of our life will set–will make our life not quite make sense
Think of a necklace–each bead perfect in itself, but they are a jumble, clutter, until strung together into a perfect satisfying pattern.
Paul tells us in Colossians that in Christ all things hang together. Without him, there is a hollowness in all things–beauty, people, art, sex, money, writing.
With him, all the things we love and love doing and having join together into a beautiful, satisfying pattern.
Christ, and the Holy Spirit fill the hollowness at the heart of all things, and bind the beads of our lives into a beautiful necklace.
Or in Dante’s metaphor, Love binds the scattered leaves of the universe into a single book.
We are created for worship, created for intensity, created for rapture.
When we do not worship god, we will worship
money,
success
the praise of man
social acceptance
popularity
power
significance
work
sex
friendship
children
the success of one’s children
spouse
gardens
possessions
add your own addiction:)
None of these is a solid rock to build our lives on. All of these will lead to disappointment. None of these can love us back–with the exception of the people–and they cannot fill the longing of our hearts, which are created to be filled with infinity, the infinity of God.
If we do not honour and thank God, our thinking becomes futile, and our hearts become darkened, and in effect we become fools, because we are investing our life, our energy and our hope in what ultimately does not matter.
Building our lives on sand, not rock, not the rock.
