To the Lord’s people God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. (Colossians 1:27) St Paul wrote these words to the church in Colossae, a place he had never visited. Paul himself was in prison in Rome awaiting his trial before Caesar.

When I was growing up I and my siblings talked sometimes about our maternal grandfather, who lived in the state of Washington. We lived in upstate New York, never saw our grandfather; but we had a photograph of him in his army uniform sitting casually with one hand resting on his knee. It was a posture identical to one that I often saw in my brother, whose middle name was also my grandfather’s name. I thought that these things meant that Grandpa was certainly part of us, even though we never saw him. Sometimes our older cousins would comment that our brother looked like our grandpa.

Whenever a child is born the relatives are quick to discern who that child “favors.” Everyone wants to see himself or herself in an infant’s face and form. “He has his fathers’ height.” “She has her mother’s red hair.” To find ourselves in another is an irresistible temptation. There is something glorious in being an indelible part of a family, possessing a permanent place at the holiday table.

When Paul wrote to the Colossians, a group of mostly Gentiles who had been converted by the preaching of Paul’s friend Epraphras , Paul was recognizing in them their mutual brother in Jesus. He was reaffirming for them that the Christ they had experienced and accepted lived in them as well as in Paul himself, and that the connection was a glorious one surpassing all other connections among people.

To the Galations Paul wrote about this new reality: So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. . . There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male of female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

(Galatians 3:26,28,27) Jesus removes our need to trace our ancestry in our predecessors. He literally conveys upon us a truer heredity: the spiritual heredity of our brother Christ. When we are his, we participate in the glory of God Himself.

Love in Him,

Prue