Monday, March 15, 2010

God: the Original Systems Thinker

We look at this Son and see the God who cannot be seen. We look at this Son and see God's original purpose in everything created. For everything, absolutely everything, above a below, visible and invisible, rank after rank of angels - everything got started in Him and finds its purpose in Him. He was there before any of it came into existence and He holds it together right up unto this moment. And when it comes to the church, He organizes it together, like a head does a body.
He was supreme in the beginning and - leading the resurrection parade - He is supreme in the end. From beginning to end He's there, towering far above everything, everyone. So spacious is He, so room, that everything of God finds its proper place in Him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe - people and things, animals and atoms - get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of His death, His blood that poured down from the Cross.
Colossians 1: 15-20, The Message

Organizing and implementing systems are the best way to accomplish tasks and achieve goals. Effective leaders know that. But we are at best only imitating God, who has a passion for order and harmony, as reflected in the verses above.

The body metaphor above portrays the church as an interconnected organism that works as an organized system of distinct and unique parts whose origin and unity is in Christ.

If God is a systems thinker, in what ways can you, having been created in His image and likeness, develop this same skill?

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