Dear Kaleid Ladies,
Good morning! Today is our final email before we take a break in the month of July. Thanks for being a part of a community of women who invite the Spirit to renew your perspectives about yourself, others, and your community so that you can love in those places with more clarity, compassion, and courage. It’s a privilege to walk with you.
Today we offer you a final quote from Lisa Sharon Harper’s Very Good Gospel. It speaks of the Great Reversal that Jesus effected through his life, death, and resurrection. It speaks of the way that God’s work of creation and vision of shalom is being renewed, one person and one relationship at a time.
“In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul wrote, ‘If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!’ (5:17). The Greek word for creation (kitisis) in this text means ‘the act of creation.’ Here’s another way to read it: “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new act of creation.’ When each person enters a love relationship with God, a new act of creation is taking place. God is recreating the world one person at a time.” (p. 65)
Eugene Peterson translates the passage from II Corinthians this way:
“Our firm decision is to work from this focused center: One man died for everyone. That puts everyone in the same boat. He included everyone in his death so that everyone could also be included in his life, a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own.
Because of this decision we don’t evaluate people by what they have or how they look. We looked at the Messiah that way once and got it all wrong, as you know. We certainly don’t look at him that way anymore. Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life emerges! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing. We’re Christ’s representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God’s work of making things right between them. We’re speaking for Christ himself now: Become friends with God; he’s already a friend with you.”
We love you. Blessings on your day, and on your week, and on your month as you live into the shalom that Christ is re-making.
See you soon,
The Kaleid Team