Devotion 05 March 2026

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation… He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. Colossians 1: 15,17

READING: Colossians 1: 15-23

This passage is a wonderful hymn of praise and declaration of faith and belief in the Supremacy of the Son of God. There are so many aspects of it which merit deep thought, but today we look at only two.

Firstly, the security and reassurance of the proclamation. That Jesus, in coming into our world, gives us the assurance that He is the First, eternal before all creation, supreme over all, and “in Him all things hold together”.

In a world where we often feel, as W. B. Yeats put it, that “the centre cannot hold”, our faith tells us that God is in control, He created us and our world for a purpose and that He holds us and our world together.

Secondly, the promise of reconciliation and restoration of “all things”. “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”(vs 19,20)

Through Christ’s death and resurrection, we, and all of creation, have been given not only an amazing gift of restoration to a fullness of life, but a reconciliation to one another, to all creation and to God. Jesus made peace between God and humanity, between people, and between human beings and the world.

In Christ we not only receive life, but we learn to share it. This is a key feature of the Christian understanding of salvation. In fact, as followers of Jesus we believe that if we aren’t sharing God’s life, we haven’t actually received it fully yet. Sharing God’s life and peace does not diminish it in our lives but multiplies it.

This ancient hymn of the early church gives us so much hope for our broken and tattered world, and for our place in it. We, like Paul, are called to be servants of God’s grace in a reconciled world, working to continue to bring about God’s restoration and reconciliation by sharing our experience of God’s love and grace with all His people and with His creation in nature.

Prayer

Jesus, our Saviour and our Lord, we thank You that You hold all things together and that You bring life and hope to all creatures under heaven. Amen