Jesus Created

If you know me, you know I often sit in cemeteries and ponder the big questions of life. It’s just a thing I do. Cemeteries are wonderful, intriguing worlds shrouded in perspective and harsh reality and morbid truth. And I need that. Because sometimes when you get a good look at death, you see the beauty of life and enjoy yours all over again.

So I often ask the big questions. Why do we die? How is life so short . . . and so long? Is there a point to all of this? How did I get here in the first place? Whose idea was this life we live? Is there a reason for it? Why do I exist anyway?

I ask these big questions, and then I answer these big questions with this Book I carry around. I preach to myself with it, and I start at the very beginning. Before I was born.

Before I was born, Jesus was. And before he was born, he was. He just was. Is. Always will be, because he is the image of God himself. The invisible God made visible.

And he – Jesus – created everything. Literally everything. Name anything. Star, cucumber, pencil lead, invisible dominion . . . he created it by his own hand, through his own power, and for his own glory.

This means he comes first in every possible way. Every. Possible. Way. Name anything. He is first in it. He existed before anything else did. And then he created everything, which automatically places him over it all. And then he raised himself from the dead and never died again, so of all resurrections, his resurrection is the greatest and the highest.

And if we thought we were excluded, he made a new people, and he made himself such a crucial part of this “church,” that they become incapacitated – yes, dead – without him. And that church includes me. My life is a part of that “all creation” thing. So Jesus did that, too.

He thought of me, he planned me, he knit me together. My body, my mind, my soul, my self, my personality, my everything. Which means that it’s all on purpose. And I have purpose. And he is first even in my life.

And he holds it all together. The universe, held together.

Me. My life. Held together.

Which is a relief, because I was attempting to hold it together myself. But no! The creator of the universe holds me together. What grace. What love.

A love that would create everything and sustain everything so that he might be preeminent in everything and so that he might reconcile everything to God through the blood of his cross.

This is how I live. This is why I live. Worries forgotten. Trials grown pale. For I am his and he is mine forever.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities — all things were created through him and for him.

And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

Colossians 1:15-20

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