Holding it All Together

SCRIPTURE:  He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. Colossians 1:17 NIV

THOUGHT: How literally do you take the Bible? This is very poetic language, but it bears thinking about, that the Triune God who created the earth (thus is before all things) could be the very force that holds it all together. I don’t actually have a problem accepting the thought that God is holding it together, and that if he took his hands off, the world would spin apart. There may even be a theology of evil that flows from the truth that God does sometimes take his hand off of people. Perhaps that is where disorder in the universe started.

In his letter to the Romans, Paul talks about people who have rejected God. “Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them (Romans 1:28-30 NIV).

Now I’ve strayed a long way from God holding it all together, but my mind wanders from his incredible love to his incredible power, and what happens to the human soul who chooses to walk away from both. Perhaps his final rescue of those who love and cling to him will come as the world spins apart.

PRAYER: Oh Triune God, you hold it all together, until the day you don’t. Thank you that you continue to be before it all – out ahead of all those who don’t think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of you. Surrounding those of us who do. How grateful I am!