Saturday, January 3, 2004
Colossians 3:15-17

In describing the clothes Christians must put on to survive and sing the Lord's song in a strange land, Paul says there is a foundational garment to put on. No, it's not a girdle and it won't slim you. But without it, you won't be able to grow in wisdom and stature. And it often won't win you favor with anybody.

"Above all," says Paul, "clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony." God intends that all of Creation be bound together in the perfect harmony of love." That's the foundation of wisdom, an "ecology of love."

No matter how many answers knowledge gives us, nor how much insight the gift of wisdom provides, there is a "bottom line" to wisdom that is embodied in the question, "What would love have us do?"

I believe all of our problems go back to the fact that while we have evolved in expanding and perfecting the gifts of our humanity from God such as our intellect, our technology, etc., we have been slow to evolve in our wisdom.

Teilhard de Chardin, the1950s theologian and biologist, believed that we are evolving toward becoming the "ethical species," so that we could fulfill our niche of both caring for the world and enjoying it fully with God in celebration.

Austrian zoologist Konrad Lorenz said in 1965 that "Man appears to be the missing link between anthropoid apes and human beings." Ecologist James Gustave Speth, Dean of Yale University's School of Forestry, states, "We are entering the endgame in our relationship with the natural world. Whatever slack nature previously cut us is gone.''

All humankind is in the last race of its existence, a race for our lives. The next twenty years is, in the words of the title of a very good environmental book, now at "God's Last Offer." The race is to become the ethical species, fully human, in time to use our wisdom and live in favor with God and all Creation.

Paul says we can move into, affect, and sing our songs in this strange land if we "let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God." (Col. 3:15-17) The word "rule" here literally means "umpire" which in its rulings is always in favor of love as the secret to unity in the community.

Let us sing God's songs of love out of dedicated hearts as we turn from Christmas back to seeking to transform the strange land where we dwell. As Ecology Professor Cal DeWitt of Madison likes to quote, "So live in this life that God will not count you a stranger in the next one."

Dave Steffenson

All contents copyright 2003 by the Wisconsin Chapter of the Methodist Federation for Social Action. Permission is granted to United Methodist congregations, individuals and groups to reproduce and distribute this devotional without charge. All other use requires the advance permission of the editor.