In his book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, satirist Douglas Adams wrote about a race of beings in another dimension who designed a computer (the most advanced to date) to tabulate the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything. After waiting millions of years for the tabulation to be complete, the computer issues an answer: 42. This puzzling response leads those who waited for the answer to ask this: if 42 is the answer, what was the question?
Having just finished my 42nd trip around the sun, I can tell you: I don’t know the question, per say. I’ve done a lot of stupid things (I’d like to say in my youth, but old habits do die hard), learned a lot of things, met many people, made and ruined many relationships, Got married, began a family, and in all of it, I’ve only come to one conclusion: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. Of course, I didn’t come up with this, it’s from Ecclesiastes 12:13, but that doesn’t make it any less true. I have observed we are only at our best when we’re in alignment with our Creator through Jesus Christ. I’m not talking about those who use His name for their own power and glory. When we’re seeking first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, we’re at our best. We’re loving God with all of our heart, mind soul and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves. And, in doing so, we’re finding peace and contentment regardless of our circumstances.
Loved one, I know that I am and have only ever been, right when I am with Jesus. On my own, I’m selfish, self-seeking, and I have something resembling life, but it is still dead. In Christ, I have life, purpose and power, even when I have nothing to my name. I may not know the significance of “42” or know the “Question to the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything,” but I know that fulfillment is found in Christ Jesus. He died to set me free, I live in, through and by Him. What more do I need?
Colossians 1
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,
To the saints and faithful brother in Christ at Colossae:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father.
We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing—as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth, just as you learned it from Epaphras our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf and has made known to us your love in the Spirit.
And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy; giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.
And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.
Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church, of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.
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