having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.
Colossians 2:12 (NIV)
Faith in God’s Working
Through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.
You put your faith in something God did to somebody else. You were buried with him in baptism and raised with him out of the same water, and the raising came through faith in the working of God. The Colossians are warned about hollow and deceptive philosophy that depends on human tradition, and they’re given the working of God to stand on.
The working is God’s, and he’s the one who raised Christ from the dead. So the faith leans outward, onto him, and it can be a thin faith and still be leaning the right way.
A man comes into a shop that prints business cards and nothing else, with his own layout on a memory stick and no patience for the counter. He’s read about typefaces. He asks for the heavier stock by name and he says the name right. He’s brought somebody else’s card along to show what he means, and he holds it by the edges. Dale opens the file, looks at it for about a second, and tells him the last line is sitting too close to the edge. The man says he wanted it there. Dale offers him a proof and he waves it off.
The guillotine takes the last line off two hundred cards. Dale squares the stack and leaves it in the back, and he says nothing about having said it. He phones the man and tells him Thursday instead of Tuesday, with no reason given. Then he pulls his own stock down off the shelf, because the shop’s name is on the back of every card he sends out, and the man will never hear about any of it.
Dale runs the second two hundred after closing. The ink comes out a shade off the first run, close enough that nobody is ever going to hold the two of them up together.
A Prayer to Remember
Father, I check my faith the way I’d check ice, and I step only where it feels thick. I’d rather trust my own certainty than your working, and I’ve turned believing into one more thing I do well. You raised Christ out of a grave. Set me down on that and let me stand on it.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
