The gravity of love

 This week's verse is Colossians 1:17:

He himself is before all things and all things are held together in him.

A marriage is held together by consent and love. Communities and nations too. Think about it: If one person in the formerly happy couple decides that there's no longer a marriage, is there still a marriage? Legally speaking, in the eyes of God, yes, but it no longer functions as one. It takes two to be a couple. 

If people in a community decide there isn't one community anymore, it falls apart. We see this sometimes in churches or clubs that grow too big for people to all be able to hang out in one room. When we no longer see ourselves as "us," we become something colder, less alive, less filled with love. In extreme cases, we go the way of Yugoslavia and hate each other as passionately as we once loved. 

Can you still be your brother's keeper if you don't see your brother as your brother anymore?

Another thing to think about: The universe exists because God wants it to. We are here as living physical beings because of his desire and his consent. Imagine if he got bored with us, if he stopped wanting us, if he stopped holding it all together. Imagine all the invisible bonds dissolving, the strings and glue that hold us together, gravity and magnetism, atoms themselves, all drifting apart, separating into a shapeless blur of heat, energy, and nothingness. If he didn't think it was any good, why would he keep it?

It is his love that holds us together. It is his consent that allows us to hold our shape. Is there any other being we could say that about? Is there any other person in the universe, at any time in history, to whom we owe 100% of our existence? How can we not be bonded to him? How can we live without that connection?

Christ is first, because without him there would be no church. We'd just be a social club and concert venue. His love, and his consent and invitation for us to join him, are what started it all. He is not our equal. He doesn't just come and show up at our "Jesus club" the same way as a famous chess master might visit the local chess club. We join him. He is the master, the rules, and the game itself.

This week, ask yourself if Jesus is before all things in your life. Do you plan your day around him, or do you just see where you can fit him in once your family and career and hobbies are all taken care of? If there is a conflict between something he wants and something you want, something he says or something you believe, his morality or the world's morality, which takes first place? Who, in the sense of personhood, do you put first? Where do your values start?

If you manage to do that, also observe the things that pull on you. What exerts a gravitational pull on your life? Your attention, your resources, your time, your heart's fondest interest? Where do you flow when you let yourself go?

People often explore this during Lent, giving up the things that seem to pull them more strongly than they might feel the pull of the church, or which pull them in the opposite direction to Christ's calling on their lives.

Do you love your fellow Christians, in a sense of being drawn into a deeper relationship with them? Or do you just play church with them in the same way as you might play chess with your chess club friends? Is there any attraction that pulls you to spend time with them, to bless them, to pray for them?

Do you find yourself longing to spend time with God in prayer, in the same way as you might be hungry for a cheeseburger, or want to catch that latest season of your favorite series? What pulls you? What holds you down?

All things are held together by him and without him first and forever there can be nothing. 

Think that over this week, and see if you really believe it. See if your actions and thoughts and emotions are in line with it. Does the gravity of his love hold you? Is he your first and only choice? If not, figure out what needs to happen to patch things up.