God of Wonders

This morning the heat is simmering across melting road pavement in my area. You know the type of heat. The kind that comes and dances like some Russian ballerina doing some toe-tapping to the beat of Red Bull. Honestly, the heat is dancing, proving there is more to life than, well, life.

As I prepare for my Thursday-go-to-visit-meetings -- where I figure what it means to get in the car, set the GSP to "go" and I "go," watching the day dip below the horizon while I'm greeting and meeting and on-and-on.  The list of visits grows not diminishes with each passing hour, and each passing week, as I watch the list grow like the time was my own, when it most certainly is not.

It reminds me of the scripture this morning that bounced into my brain early on. "For in Christ lives all the fulness of God in a human body. So you also are complete through your union with Christ, who is the head over every ruler and authority."

Whew. That's a table-setting, found in Colossians, unwrapped in editions thousand of years since. Paul's letter to that church, crumpled and straightened, crumpled and straightened. He fired it off when his wi-fi was working properly, I suppose.

Look at what he's saying here... "all the fullness of God in a human body." Wow. God dresses up as one of us, just like one of us. All the power of God, in a human's mixed-and-matched frailty.

If I was of a mind, I might be thinking (Super)man here. Walter Martin claims that Colossians 2:9 refers to the trinity of the Godhead. Some want to say that Jesus had two natures at once, evidently with the thought that "bodily" refers to Jesus as a human being, and that godhead in some ways refers to Jesus as the Supreme being.

Me? Me, I get a headache thinking all that through. But here's what I believe. Jesus was very much human, burps and blemishes and all. Bodily refers to Jesus' fleshly body. But there's more (and less, if you will). The Greek word translated Godhead at Colossians 2:9 is often transliterated as Theotes, which refers to deity, divinity, etc. I can't argue fer it or agin it. But I will say that if you fall back to the root of that Greek word, THEOS, you got to, got to, got to fall back to the Hebraic background of forms of the Hebrew word often transliterated as "El."

If you fall back to EL, then you know that corresponds to forms of the Greek word transliterated as THEOS, or (WAIT FOR IT, WAIT FOR IT) GOD. EL is God. Get it? God it? Good.

In other words, Colossians 2:9, if we break it in like it was a new baseball glove, working it and working it till it is malleable (using that word twice in a week is some sort of Billy record), we could, COULD, read it this way: "For in Christ lives all the fullness of (El, or Theos, or GOD) in a human body."

Or perhaps best of all, "For in (Jesus) we find (the Father) in a human body." Jesus in the real world is God the Father in a human bodied world.

Just saying, is all.

We are standing on holy ground when we stand in our sanctuaries. There are angels all around. We are praying to Jesus now. We are standing in his presence on that holy ground. We can't help but be moved if we allow ourselves to be moved. For He is THEOS. He is EL. He is GOD. He is the great I AM.

Singing is going on while we are standing on holy ground, seems to me.

That should get your legs trembling and your feet flopping and your toes tapping. Again, just saying is all.

That should get your Amens, Amening. That should get your imagination running across open territory like the sun could be stopped in the sky.

That should ...

That should get the brown-eyed girl's brows twitching, the blue-eyed man wailing some Southern Gospel, the green-eyed mom and dad singing and dancing for Jesus or simply falling to our knees in whopping fresh newness.

Friends, are you ready? Can you be ready? Can you imagine what it will be like, what it was like, when human body meets THEOtic wonder? That's Thursday's territory.

And all you thought you were going to get is some kind of life lesson or something make you laugh.  Not up in here. Not on this drip-dried morning of greatness.

Sing your praises to the Lord, the awesome God of wonder and might. THEO and such, indeed.