"...in him all things hold together"

Have you ever seen one of these apple puzzles?

The idea is simple.....

break up the apple into its pieces, and then...

just put it back together again.

Nothing to it really!

And then when you've got the pieces correctly assembled you put in the 'core' piece...it slides down the centre. When that's in place, it holds all the other pieces together. It's the key piece.

I find that things in the real world can sometimes help me understand spiritual truths...not perfectly, but at least shed enough light on it to help me understand.

Let me explain...

There's a verse in the bible...Colossians 1:17...which says about Jesus, "He is before all things, and in him all things hold together".

What does that mean? It sounds like one of those deep, mysterious truths that we're never going to quite get our heads around. And to be fair, we'll probably never quite understand it fully.

But let me have a go...

The Bible says that Jesus is eternal....and that he was involved in every part of creation. And not just that he was involved in creating, but that in fact, Jesus sustains all things today....he keeps things going...his power is what keeps things together. In a way that we can't quite understand, if Jesus was to withdraw his sustaining grace and power, things would cease to be. Kind of like if you took out that central part of the apple puzzle....the whole thing would fall apart.

According to the Bible, Jesus is pretty important not just to you and me, but to the entire universe. 

Just a thought...