OCTOBER 20

HELD TOGETHER BY CHRIST

“And He is before all things, and by Him all things consist.” (Col. 1:17)

Consist - from the Greek word “sunistemi” meaning: to unite, bring together, and then be held together.

Our Lord, in His creative activity, has brought all things together in harmonious unity, with the result that they cohere. Even in our chaotic state of seeming disorganized confusion, HE CONTINUES TO “work out all things after the counsel of His own will,” (Eph. 1:11), and it is impossible for things to utterly fall apart. There may be times when individually, in our personal situation and circumstance, the bottom seems to have fallen out, and everything is at loose ends, and appears to be thoroughly disjointed. Yet because “IN HIM we live, and move, and have our being,” (Acts 17:29), as we learn to “stand still and see the salvation of the Lord,” we find it does not totally disintegrate. Out of the bleak and barren, out of the rhymeless rhyme, out of the seeming nothingness He births another time, a time of life and victory, and we see that He truly does have it “all together.”

The loose ends, that to us appear miles apart, are held together in HIS hands, and He is in control of all things, steadily working out His plan of the ages. Ultimately all shall redound to His praise. “Having made peace through the blood of His cross, by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself; by Him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven.” (Col. 1:20). In us there may yet remain much confusion, turmoil, enmity - but IN HIM it is all reconciled, and now He is working in us to bring us to this same state of total triumph, perfect peace and harmony. Ere time has run its course, we shall see how truly BY HIM ALL THINS CONSIST, have been placed and held together.

It remains, “He’s got the whole world in His hands.” For “the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” (1 Cor. 10:26). HE IS WITH US, in absolute control of our circumstances, to work it all together into our good, and for His praise. Because He holds us together, we can daily overcome!

Ray Prinzing