Alpha and Omega
I have just finished a wonderful day with the students at the Covenant School of Ministries in Wales. We have been looking at different images of our corporate identity in Christ and as usually I have happily allowed myself to be sidetracked many times along the way to a fuller understanding of the eternal plan and purpose of God. At the end we were looking at Christ as the present message of God, or as the fullness of the revelation of God as the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.
In fact Christ is the entire alphabet of God. He is the full expression of God. The plan and purpose of God is centered in Christ. When we know Christ we will be able to read any situation, any society, any age and the development of history itself. When we don't know Christ things don't come together, we are the left with a fragmented understanding of what is going on around us.Christ as the alphabet enables us to read and understand history.
When we have our identity in Christ we realize that each one of us are like single letters in the alphabet. One by one we are not able to express much, but when we are being put together in the right order we will be able to express Him in multiple ways. When we are being put together we give meaning to each other and are able to express ourselves in a great variety of ways according to the different measure of grace given to the people we are joined to by the Holy Spirit. There is a rich variety in the grace of God and in the spiritual gifts he is giving to each one of us. We must manage the grace well and allow the generosity of God to flow through us to bless other people. We are called to be a colourful and creative community displaying the manifold grace of God.
I can see some of this colourful and manifold grace of God in the students I am privileged to be with these days!