Keeping It Together

Two old men were sitting outside a seniors’ home enjoying the sunshine.

One turned to the other and said, “Slim, I’m 83 years old and I’m just full of aches and pains. You’re about my age. How do you feel?”

Slim said, “I feel just like a newborn baby.”

“Really? Like a newborn baby?”

“Yep. No hair. No teeth. And I think I just wet my pants.”

There is a strange comfort in humor like that, because it names something we all know but don’t often say out loud: life has a way of undoing us.

What once felt solid begins to loosen. What once held together begins to fray. Bodies wear down. Relationships strain. Certainties wobble. Even faith, if we are honest, can feel stretched thin at times.

Most of us live with a quiet but persistent question humming beneath the surface of our lives: How do I keep this together? How do I keep my marriage together, my family together, my sanity together, my faith together?

And if we belong to a church, we eventually ask the same question there. How do we keep this together?

When things begin to feel fragile, our instinct is to reach for control. We tighten rules. We clarify positions. We draw lines.

We assume that if we can just define things clearly enough, enforce things strongly enough, or defend things passionately enough, the cracks will stop spreading.

But Scripture asks a different question. Not what do we need to fix? but what is holding us?

Because when the center is strong, tension does not destroy.

And when the center is weak, no amount of effort can compensate.

The poet William Butler Yeats wrote in the aftermath of World War I, watching the collapse of order and the rise of chaos:

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”

He wasn’t writing theology, but he was telling the truth. He describes a world spinning out of control, like a falcon circling farther and farther away until it can no longer hear the falconer’s voice.

Once that connection is lost, the flight becomes dangerous. Direction disappears. Collapse is inevitable.

That image feels painfully familiar today. We live in a world of spinning voices — news cycles, outrage cycles, opinion cycles — all moving faster, louder, farther apart. And the church is not immune. We are often caught in the same widening gyre, pulled by fear on one side and certainty on the other.

We argue about doctrine.

We fracture over politics.

We divide over worship styles, culture, race, gender, and interpretation.

And we keep asking, How do we keep this together?

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians was written to a community asking exactly that question. Jews and Gentiles were trying to occupy the same spiritual space, carrying centuries of suspicion, resentment, and religious boundary-keeping.

This was not a disagreement over preferences. This was deep, historical division.

What is striking is where Paul begins. He does not start with instructions. He does not start with warnings. He does not start with conflict resolution strategies.

He starts with God.

Ephesians 1 takes us back before the church, before the conflict, before the division, before we ever made a single decision for or against God. Paul takes us back to eternity and says something breathtaking: God always wanted a family.

Not a program.

Not an institution.

A family.

And you were always meant to be part of it.

God did not discover you late. He did not respond to you reluctantly.

He did not include you conditionally.

Scripture says that before the foundation of the world, God set His love on you. That means your place in God’s heart is not fragile. It does not depend on your consistency, your insight, or your performance.

This matters more than we realize, because many of us live as if our belonging is always at risk. We assume that God’s affection must be continually earned, continually reinforced, continually justified. But Paul says the opposite. God’s decision came first. Our response came later.

That is why Scripture uses two powerful words to describe our relationship to God, and it uses both without apology.

Jesus says, You must be born again.

Paul says, You have been adopted.

Born — because real life is given, not improved.

Adopted — because we were intentionally chosen, not accidentally included.

Those are not contradictions. They are what theologians call an antinomy — two truths that seem to pull in opposite directions, but are held together perfectly by God. We struggle with antinomies because we like neat categories. God is comfortable with mystery.

We are born into God’s family.

And we are adopted into God’s family.

Both are true.

And both tell us something essential: you belong here.

Paul then explains what it cost God to make that belonging possible. He uses the language of redemption, and in doing so, he reaches into the harsh realities of the ancient world.