Well, I woke up this mornin’ feelin’ bum…. (Maybe someone can finish that song and put it to music.) It seemed I couldn’t (wouldn’t?!) keep my mind from churning over a certain issue (ie, person) or two.

Then I start reading in Colossians 3.

“If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above” (1).

“Set your affection on things above” (2).

When I see issues (ie people) before I see Christ, things can look mighty hopeless and my attitudes become mighty dim.

I am risen with Christ! That means new, abundant life with a new focus and new set of values.

But I didn’t wake up feeling that way.

So I need to make a choice.

Seek after and set my mind on things above.

Actually, make that plural — choices.

“Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry” (5).

“But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth.” (8).

Yup, a bunch of gross, negative, evil, anti-Christian things — and I must choose to part company with them.

The chapter continues with more choices I must make — positive, new-man, image-of-Christ choices.

I would like to put down the full text of verses 12-17. Please, please — read them.

I know — I’ll link to them. Click here!

For many months I’ve felt like “There’s got to be more to life than this.” (I’ll let that statement stand without further personal elaboration. If it’s your size of shoe also, I’m certain you can figure out on which foot to install it.)

This morning I am encouraged and enticed by a fragment from Colossians 2:10.

“And ye are complete in him.”

Complete! As in whole, fulfilled, rounded out, content, perfected, and all those wonderful parallel concepts.

In Him! Not in just anybody. In Him!

Now take two other verses from this chapter and fit them into this.

“[Christ,] In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (3).

“For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (9).