Monday, January 11, 2016

Devotion 1.12.16

Last night we crowned a national champion in college football's second year of a true bowl playoff system.  I can imagine it now, 10 years from now, as I sit with a grandchild in my lap (at least 10 years the way things are going), talking to them about the "old days."

"So there wasn't a bowl playoff a long time ago?" he or she will ask.  "No, I will say, in the day, we had to wait for a few days to hear about the poll that ordained a #1 team in our nation.  And you won't believe this, but bowl games were played on New Year's Day, not from Dec 17 to Jan 11.  And this will floor you as well, we had to get up and walk about 8 feet to change the channel on the television."  "Wow grandpa," he or she will say, "You guys were primitive."  "Yes," I'll respond as I pat his back in his protective bubble mom and dad bought him to avoid every scrape and scratch that can come about in life, "We didn't have the things you have now.  We had to turn the audio tape over in a machine or flip the record over." 

Life changes and gives us new "things" almost daily.  A new system to pick a champion and a new way to deliver music to listen are both examples of change.  You can think of all the changes over a lifetime. 

As Christians, what is our most significant change?  Hopefully, we say that our most significant change is the newness we have in Christ.  "Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in the newness of life." (Romans 6:2 - 4)

We are sinners, but through our baptism, we are clothed in Christ, walking in the newness of life.  That's a significant change that can only be described as miraculous.  Praise be to God the Father who gave us His Son to cleanse us from our unrighteousness and to the Spirit who delivers our faith to us through the miracle of baptism, combining water with the Word of God.

Hope Men's Ministry

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