All the Fullness

Concerning goodness and blessing, how much can you take? I hope you can take a lot. Don’t we all want to be filled to capacity with the highest experiences of the greatest good? O I suppose people sometimes get into the rut of complaining and expecting the worst; life is difficult enough to put us there sometimes. But mostly we yearn for blessing.

I mention this because the third chapter of Ephesians, our focus for this Sunday, brings us one of St. Paul’s effusive descriptions of the blessings afforded us in Christ. It comes from a messenger of the Good News that has endured indescribable suffering, but I cannot imagine a higher expression of thanksgiving. Please read it over and feel the emotions it reveals within Paul as he gives this wish and blessing:

I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.  (Ephesians 3:14-21)

Don’t you love being wished to know the strength in your inner being which is the power of God’s own Spirit? Paul sees Christ as indwelling all who believe and sees them as grounded and rooted in love. He wishes us all to be filled with all the fullness of God. He sees us as set apart, in the process of knowing more and more the love of Christ that is really beyond our capacity to know. His sense of what is available to us is expansive; he visualizes the indescribable breadth, length, height, and depth of God’s connection to us in Christ. God works it in beyond what we can ever imagine. May we all know this day the grounding and rootedness He speaks of in divine, Love.