We once had an associate pastor, Chris Griggs, who poured efforts into leading and developing the Sunday School teachers of Curtis Baptist Church. He told us that one of his first steps when preparing a lesson was to read the scripture passage he was to teach on. No surprise there, right? He would read it not once, or even twice, but ten times. “Do this at the outset of your lesson prep,” he said, “Don’t stop and take any notes, during these readings. Just read it.”
After a fashion, I do learn things this way. While too time-consuming for routine practice I prefer to memorize the passages. To commit one verse after another to memory requires repetition–more than the ten readings Griggs suggested. During (and after) these events, the Holy Spirit fits the scriptures to various snapshots in and around my life.
Monday morning is when I begin my lesson prep, but my work-Mondays start with a 7:15 a.m. conference the medical community calls Grand Rounds. I must be off to my truck no later than 6:50 a.m. or I will be late, and more worrisomely a hypocrite. “Be on time!” I preach to my residents. I better be.
That Monday there was little time to ponder the passage, and so I took up a well-worn Bible, the one my wife got at InterVarsity’s Sixteen Student Mission Convention: Urbana 90. I picked up that Bible and began reading and reading the passage just as Chris taught. The following day I took up Chris’ second step and began writing brief notes about these verses.
Neither our sins nor God’s bigness limits him.
14 For this
reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, (Ephesians 3:14-15–ESV)
We will shortly come back to how he bows in prayer. Before we do that look at him before whom Paul bows. To bow down and pray, and to pray to God the Father seems intimate and personal, one-on-one, Paul and God, two beings in the universe together in what might seem like isolation.
Look, however, to the next verse where Paul qualifies his use of the word Father. He carries that word from the implication of family way, way out to another dimension by saying, “from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.” Remember how Moses recorded the arrival of people on the earth? “Let us make man in our image,” said God. Fatherhood as written of here is less about family and more about a creator, a people-maker.
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