The Romance of Romans-Part 122

[Michael]

Romans Chapter 16 cont'd

Give my love to all of these people: Amplias, my dear friend in the
Lord; Urbane, who has helped us in Christ; Stachys my beloved friend;
Apelles, whose loyalty to Christ has been proved; the whole household
of Aristobulus; Herodion, my relative; the household of Narcissus, who
are all believers; Tryphena and Tryphosa, who are Christ's workers;
Persis, who has worked hard for the Lord; Rufus, who is chosen by God,
and his mother, who is like a mother to me also; Asyncritus, Phlegon,
Hermas, Patrobas, Hermes, and all the believers with them; Philologus
and Julia, Nereus and his sister, Olympas and all the believers with
them.
Greet each other with a holy embrace. The churches of Christ send
their greetings to you.

Comments:

The affection we feel for and express to our fellow believers can be
infectious...a holy virus. I refer to fellowship or "koininia" (Gk) as
an "ordinary miracle" of the Christian experience...a literal exchange
of the very life of Christ between one person and another. The reality
of this quality of loving and healthy relating among the followers of
Jesus is maybe the most powerful witness to the genuineness of our
faith in the hearts and minds of folks who have yet to come to worship
Jesus.

I can't count the thousands of times that I have experienced a keen
awareness of how Christ has been present and "passing between" another
believer/other believers and myself as we have shared our dreams, our
hopes, our fears, our failures, our food, our adventures, our
victories, our songs, our love, our sufferings, our joys, our prayers,
the word of God, the Lord's supper and/or the many other things of
life. What a wonderful challenge it is to us all to see to it that in
all our relating and working with each other in the networks of our
faith communities that we ensure that we are putting our whole hearts
into maintaining this quality of shared life in Jesus and not allow
the weeds of dissension, unresolved conflict, jealousy, resentment,
offense, competition and the like to grow up and pollute our
relational gardens.