Titus: Slaves for Christ
Saturday, February 16, 2019
Today’s Noontime offering is a personal reflection on Paul’s Letter to Titus, a brief epistle in which we find valuable advice on bringing disparate voices together. It was this letter that united many in the formation of churches for Christ in the first century. If we savor the wisdom we find here, we may still find unity through this short letter two thousand years after its writing.
![Christ_Cleansing_The_Temple_sm[1]](https://thenoontimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/christ_cleansing_the_temple_sm1.jpg?w=295&h=225)
And so we pray that our acts of hope and our endless intercessory prayers for these reluctant travelers will reach God’s ears. We must constantly communicate with God – and always with a smile – that a plan that does not allow for the conversion of sinners will be a plan with holes in it. We must be as persistent as the widow in Luke 18 who rails against the unfair judge when it comes to those who distort God’s love in a perverse homage to self rather than to the will of God. We understand that we must keep ourselves safe from this kind of corruption . . . but we do not give up . . . we continue to ask for transformation . . . our own as well as that of those who choose to do harm to us, ourselves and others. We cannot abandon someone with whom we have spent a portion of our journey . . . even though that person demonstrates clearly that they wish to take a fork in the road that puts distance between us. So these people we will continue to hold in prayer . . . in the expectation that God’s will – and not ours – be done.
![parableofthepersistentwidow[1]](https://thenoontimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/parableofthepersistentwidow1.jpg?w=221&h=257)
Like Paul, let us all be slaves to Christ, slaves to this Law of Love which keeps vigil, which hopes for good, and which sends endless petitions rising to God like incense for the transformation of the world, the transformation of others as well as for ourselves . . . that we all may one day find union with one another and with Christ.
Images from: http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20060313JJ.shtml and http://www.free-stories.net/children-bible-stories/new-testament-stories/parable-of-the-persistent-widow.html
For more on Paul’s Letter to Titus, see the Titus – Church as Community page on this blog.
For a wonderful way to experience the cities Jesus and Paul knew, visit: www.bibleplaces.com
A re-post from February 16, 2019.