Preparation
Read and reflect upon Ephesians 2:1-10, asking the question: What is God up to in the world according to Paul?

Now the whole offer which Christianity makes is this:that we can, if we let God have His way, come to share i the life of Christ….He came to this world and became man in order to spread to other men the kind of life He has—by what I call a “good infection.”⁹
C.S. Lewis

It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live.…It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy, and with incredible love, he embraced us.
Ephesians 2:1, 4
The Message

The centrality of grace combines with the centrality of Jesus. What Jesus did in his life, death, resurrection makes grace available; and we receive it through seeking a living relationship with him. Because salvation promises as its fulfillment a perfectly restored relationship with God, it makes sense that this can be achieved only through relationship. Not through a set of rules or practices, a social system, or a philosophy but through recentering one’s life on a person.¹⁰
Debra Rienstra

Reflection
God is up to something good in this world, in our communities, and in our unique lives. One way of describing Christian maturity is to say that it is the lifelong process by which our lives and our stories become centered in God’s life and God’s good story.

It is a wonderful day when we come to know that God has entered our story. How transforming to recognize such a personal and loving presence within our lives! It changes our whole way of being in the world. Nothing looks the same.

But this is not the only such discovery along the journey. It is perhaps even more momentous when we see that not only is God part of our story, but that we are actually part of God’s story; his unfolding narrative and work in this world. Again, this gracious discovery confronts and deepens our whole way of seeing and being in the world. God is up to something very good. And we are not spectators. We are participants in this work.

Or, put another way, there are two very significant awakenings in our growing up into Christ: (1) When we first realize that God has entered our lives, and (2) sometimes years later, when we realize that we have entered God’s life. For some of us it is not until well down the road that we come to appreciate that God’s concern and commitment extends far beyond simply making our lives better (which he certainly does!). His intentions are much more than an improvement plan for our individual lives. He wants to share his very life and work with us.

Consider for a moment, or perhaps reconsider, the early wisdom we received as children in Sunday school, where we were introduced to God’s life as a sort of family life. As we learned all those years ago, God is introducing us into the way of his family. We come along like orphans, without siblings or parents, without direction, without guidance, but with a desperate need to be “familied.” We are invited to be members of God’s family life. The Father of the Lord Jesus is “re-parenting” us by the Spirit. Jesus is “re-brothering” us by the Spirit. We are learning to be sons and daughters of God.

And in truth this is what the Spirit does––he “families” orphans. Whether or not we are fully aware of it, we long for the attention and the discipline and the rootedness of this family. We have tried making it on our own, but there is a growing sense that we have been made for a shared life; the sort of shared life that seems to resonate from this family of Father, Son, and Spirit. Then comes the wonderful discovery: God is taking a particular interest in us. The family of God is entering into our orphaned life. This new family pays attention to us. We are invited to family gatherings, birthdays and holidays, where there is feasting and laughter and gifts. The attention fills a spot that has been aching for years. It seems to make so much sense of our life that didn’t make sense before. This is what we have been missing.

But the life of the orphan does not shrug off easily. In time we begin to recognize that some of the old aches and questions and loneliness remain. In truth, we hear the Father’s words of affirmation and attention, but we are still reluctant. We show up at all the gatherings, we accept the gifts, but we’re not fully comfortable with this strangely shared community. That is, does this family really desire us to be a part? All this attention might in fact be too good to be true. We wait for an angle, a catch, another shoe to drop. Loneliness is far more familiar to us than this new family.

God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.
Ephesians 1:5
New Living Translation

Even in the presence of genuine love, orphans often hold onto the isolated life that they know and understand. So too we hold a portion of ourselves back. We experience the family on our terms, all the while suspicious as to whether we really belong here, for we cannot really imagine ourselves as actual brothers or sisters, sons or daughters.The love of the family certainly has changed us, but we continue to resist full immersion into its shared life.

Such is the struggle in many of our lives of faith. We are keenly aware that God has entered our lives, but we are ignorant and even resistant to the reality that we have entered God’s life. We hold onto our individual way of seeing and being in the world. So as we grow up into Christ, we must expect a deep inner struggle between our former life, understood and lived individually, and our new life, shared in Jesus.

It is at this critical juncture that we need help in recognizing this, that we need friends, other brothers and sisters, who will consistently challenge our individual and “orphaned” ways of being in the world; who will remind us, at difficult times, that we have not been abandoned. We need others who will remind and reassure us that God is re-parenting us, converting our whole way in the world, and lovingly shaping us into a more holy and human form. And somehow and somewhere, surrounded by these gracious reminders, we wake again and again to the startling reality that our life and work is found within God’s generous life and work and way.

Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving us is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish!
Ephesians 2: 7-8a
The Message

May our attention and trust in this deeply generous life of God grow. In Jesus’ name.

Conversation
Good conversation requires deep listening and honest dialogue. We invite you to continue some good conversation through the questions below. Listen for new questions and perspectives emerging from your time together. May our listening together invite a deeper understanding and appreciation for who God is and who we are.

• What stood out to you from the above reflection?

• How does it change your thinking and living to realize that not only has God entered your life, but he has invited you to enter his life?

• How have you been reminded over the past few years that God takes a particular and loving pleasure in who you are? What hinders you from fully accepting and appreciating God’s love for you?

• In what ways do you find yourself needing to be “re-parented” by God? What must be learned, as well as unlearned?

Prayer
What has this reflection and conversation stirred in your mind and
heart? Convert your thoughts and feelings into a written prayer:

God, giver of life
you alone know
how our life can truly succeed….
Show us how to let go
of whatever hinders us
from meeting you,
from letting ourselves be touched by your Word.
Help us to welcome and accept
whatever in us yearns to come alive
in the image and likeness
you have dreamed for us today
and every day for ever and ever.11
Amen.

This journal is an excerpt from Growing Up: A Lifelong Journey by Rob Loane.  See book for all references. 

Discuss!