Colossians 1:1-14
Proper 10 (15) - Year C
It is quite one thing to be filled with the fruit of faith, completed in the art of forgiveness of sins, and quite another to be on the way toward such within the context of prayers for the journey.
So much of religious life revolves around being blamed for not being good enough and unrealistically using one's own experience as the baseline for the experience of everyone else.
A way to escape the eternal bouncing back and forth between these extremes is to give thanks that we are on a journey that is growing in the midst of the world around.
Who is unceasing in their prayer for you as you travel along? Who are you unceasing in prayer for as they travel along? Where is the locus of the prayers for us together as we travel along? It is probably beyond you or me as we get so caught up in our moments of triumph and deserving to be seated at "God's right hand" that we can't clearly pray for that which is so close to us. Can the church where you are pray for the church where I am and, of course, the other way around as well? If we can't, won't, don't where then is the rescue we so need from the power of "darkness"? Pray, dearest ones, pray!
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/july2004.html
Joyful Endurance. What a pairing.
This keeps us on track that future hope might already bear fruit and grow within the present world. The sense of thankful completion or wholeness joins with the hard work of growing, day-by-day, in, through and among a world still incomplete and strewn with shards.
This is the loveliness that is Epaphras' teaching. The journey to redemptive forgiveness (rather than redemptive suffering) is through Joyful Endurance. Try it, you might like it. It is a taste worth acquiring.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/july2004.html
A word of hope for the future is known because a word of hope about the present has been heard. To disjoint the two is to miss worthy living (joyful patience).
Down through the ages, to this very day, those with the greatest hope for tomorrow speak a word of hope about today. If we can't see a new possibility for right now our "hope" for tomorrow is delusional, not really hope at all.
It is this focus on present hope that grounds every other hope.
- - -
prayer without ceasing
calls for a patience
beyond patience
known otherwise
as joy
prayer without ceasing
calls for action
beyond results
known otherwise
as hope
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_07_01_archive.html
Faith and Love are evidenced when Hope is alive (verses 4-5). This emphasis practically turns 1 Corinthians 13 around - here the greatest of these is Hope.
Look - Love is the greatest!
Look - Faith is the greatest!
Look - Hope is the greatest!
So Paul expects and prays for the folks at Colossae that they would lead worthy lives, lives lived with joy, patience, and power that reflect their Hope (verse 10).
This Hope is for them tied to that redemptive mercy of forgiveness (verse 14).
Look - Forgiveness is the greatest!
Look - Mercy is the greatest!
Do you still Hope for forgiveness and live in that Hope (not groveling for some rescue, but standing firm that your expected forgiveness will engage and energize your present forgiveness of others even before you experience your own)? Now there is Hope that is still Hope and not a quid pro quo. No wonder Paul, here, claims its greatness.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2010/07/colossians-11-14.html