I've been working through G. I. Williamson's study guide for the Heidelberg Catechism, trying to read the suggested scriptures and think honestly about the study questions he puts at the end of each section. My little substitute for Sunday school, I guess.

Anyway, reading one of the scripture references today (in Colossians 1), something hit me so hard it nearly knocked me off of my seat: "All things were created through him and for him." For him. Jesus.

If Paul is to be believed, everything that's ever happened and ever will happen has ultimately been about Jesus. He was The Point of the whole show. Dinosaurs, the Roman Empire, the American Revolution, rings around Saturn, the Horsehead Nebula: all exist as they do in order that a particular Galilean peasant could be born, live, die on a cross, and be resurrected in just exactly the way he did.

I've heard this sort of thing said before; I must have read this very passage in Colossians twenty times if I've read it once. But I've never grokked the underlying idea like I did this morning.

Everything, all things, all particular events in this universe: they find their center, their "reason for being", in Jesus of Nazareth. The implications are staggering. If Paul is right, denying the "Lordship" (pale word!) of Christ is something like denying gravity or electromagnetism.

I'm not sure that I really believe this deep down. Even assuming it's true, I'm not sure what to do about it. But the idea does have quite an impact, doesn't it?