Brought Near, Built Together

from Ephesians 2:11-22, a letter to people who once felt like outsiders

Dear ones who used to feel far away,

Picture a courtyard with a wall running straight down the middle of it. Not a wall of stones you could touch. A wall in the heart. On one side stood the people who had carried God's promises for a long, long time. On the other side stood everybody else. Strangers, far-off ones, people with no name in the family, no place at the table, no home to call home.

Maybe you have stood on a wrong side before, and wondered deep down, Is there a place here for someone like me?

Once you were far off. Now you have been brought near.

You did not climb that wall. Someone came out to you. He walked all the way to the lonely spot where you were standing, and he did not stop until he reached you.

It was Jesus. And that wall, the one that kept the near ones near and the far ones far?

He tore it down.

He made peace with his own body, with his own blood, on his own cross. The two sides that could never be one side, he made into one. No more two families, but one family of children in one home.

So there is no such thing now as a far-off one.

You are not a stranger here. You are not a visitor who keeps his shoes by the door, ready to leave. You belong. Every old promise, every long-ago thing God ever vowed to his people, it is yours now too. The Father who gathered them has gathered you, and he knows your name the way he knows theirs.

And God is building something. Stone by stone, person by person, the far ones and the near ones lifted up and set in place together. You are one of the stones. The lonely child, the left-out one, the one who thought there was no room, you are being fitted right into the walls of a house.

And whose house is it?

It is God's own house, the place where he comes to live. He does not want to stay far above you, behind a wall, where you can only wonder about him. He wants to live with you. Among all of you, together.

This is true already. The building has begun. You can feel the nearness today, like warmth coming through a window.

And the house is not finished. Every day he is still bringing far-off ones near, still setting stones in place, still gathering. He will not stop and call it done while even one of his children is left outside.

So when the door swings open again and another far-off one is carried in from the cold, get up and make room. That is your family coming home.

With you inside these walls,
Paul