While driving recently I passed a house in the countryside with a long front porch running the entire width of the house. On the porch were three rocking chairs in curious positions, one to the left of the entrance, one at the right extreme end railing and the other at the other extreme end. They weren’t placed as though the residents of the house wanted to enjoy each other’s company as they took in the view, but rather as if they were trying to avoid or escape one another. Of course there are times when family members need a break from one another, but that arrangements of chairs seemed to reflect a scattered or divided family rather than a cohesive one. One Spanish word for the word “member” is “integrante” which implies belonging in such a way as to be “integrated” into the essential fabric of that family or that corporate entity whatever it may be.
As believers we can begin to be able to enjoy and like ourselves more, partly because we sense our Creator’s enjoyment of us as His new creations in Christ. It works that way with our loved ones and fellow believers too. We begin to enter into a kind of double enjoyment of them. First our own growing appreciation for who they are in God, and then, comingling with that, God’s enjoyment and fondness toward them. We are privileged to begin to experience some inkling of that in our own souls!
Then I read the second chapter of the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians where he says that we as believers were made alive together and raised together and made to “sit together in heavenly places.” It goes on to day that WE are a masterpiece like a great poem (the Greek word for workmanship is in fact” poema”). Individually we cannot be that masterpiece any more than one word can constitute a poem, but taken together we CAN be, we can make a powerful impact in our world. That impact involves doing the works that are prepared for us to implement corporately, that we can only reach or attain to when blended as one.
Imagine a masterpiece that the very beholding of which would not merely please or stimulate the beholders but irreversibly and profoundly transform them! That is the kind of work of ultimate art that our God is fashioning out of us as we allow it to come forth.
trbarlow 