Tuesday 27 October 2009

Background

Paul's imagination was extravagant, wild, bold and stunning inthe range of its thought. Here in this letter to the Church at Romehe is looking at his own circumstances. The call to apostleship hascertainly not brought him a quiet or a peaceful life. To be honest,he has been hounded from pillar to post, beaten up, imprisoned,subjected to all kinds of indignities and accusations - and he'seven been worshipped! And it's all in the cause of spreading thegood news of Jesus.

But Paul has a vision not only for his own personal future destiny,but also for the future destiny of the entire cosmos. The wholecreation, he says, has been groaning in frustration, hanging on inthere until God's breathtaking creative enterprise finds itsultimate fulfilment (verse 22). Fine so far, we may respond; butPaul goes on to claim that the sign of that ultimate fulfilment isin fact the way in which the good news of Jesus touches the livesof people like you and me, and the way in which we respond toit.

It is easy, with the advantage of astronomical investigations andtheories about the origins of the universe, to dismiss Paul's claimas fantastical and 'far out'. If the thoughts and actions of asmall population of organisms on a tiny planet spinning its wayround a very average star - one of billions - in a veryunspectacular galaxy - again, one of billions - don't we have toask ourselves the question: Why did God create all this stuff? Wasit simply for our entertainment on clear evenings? Or so thatsailors could navigate across vast oceans?

No, surely that's ridiculous! Paul is claiming that it does allhave a meaning, as our lives have a meaning. And there can be onlyone source of meaning. We can't make sense of a universe in whichthere are many, possibly conflicting, sources of meaning. So, theyare bound together in God's one unifying purpose. That is thesource of meaning.

To Ponder

What do we do with our profound thoughts andunanswerable questions? Do we simply park them, shelve them, andwatch them gather dust as the years go by? Or can we share inPaul's daring claim that there is a single source of meaning, andno truth can be declared final until everything has been fittedinto the big picture? What do you do?