Transfer

Spent some good time with the Lord this morning. Man! I needed that! It seems that for the past couple of days, I have “spent” time with Him by listening to His Word as I was doing something else and eeking out breath prayers as I moved from one task to another. Don’t get me wrong, He honors that. As my mom would say, “It bees like that sometimes.” But as we also know, strong relationships are built and sustained on quality time invested. And so, it was a blessing to sit still for a moment, read God’s Word and meditate on it. I was thinking about the preeminence of Christ, so I turned to the book of Colossians in my Bible and I read chapter 1.

I read the entire chapter, but I first “camped” on verse 13 where it says, “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His believed Son…”.  So, as descendants of Adam and Eve, we were born in the domain of darkness. Further in the chapter, it explains that “domain of darkness”. It says that we were alienated, hostile in mind, doing evil deeds. The book of Ephesians describes us as being dead in our sins, children of wrath, having no hope and without God. An understatement for sure, but I would say that’s pretty bleak. But then God, the Father, transferred us to the Kingdom of Jesus.

This business of transfer has been on my mind heavily for the past couple of days. So, my middle daughter and I ventured out to the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, a first for the both of us. What was also a first for us was navigating the metro rail system of LA. Since we went on a Sunday, we simply paid a flat fee for a day pass. On our adventure, we realized that we needed to make two transfers to get to the festival. We had to pass by this one machine to get make our first transfer. We kept putting our phones up to it to scan our mobile train tickets and nothing was

happening. For a hot second, we began to panic. That was until one of the security guards asked if he could help. We told him we were looking to make a transfer, and he told us that it was already taken care of with our ticket purchase. All transfers on Saturdays and Sundays were free. Heading back the way we came, we learned that we could not do that because the last train heading back to our area would not come for another 2 .5 hours. So, we needed to pivot and make two more transfers only to reach the same city as our original destination, but two miles away from where our car was parked. Had to call my

husband to the rescue. He dropped everything and showed up for us as he always does. A blessing! Anyway, I digress. A lot of transfers were needed. But because we paid the flat fee, all the transfers were free and easy to make. We simply waited a short time for the next train to arrive.

Out of his incredible lovingkindness, God sent Jesus to die for us and to rise from the dead for us because there was no conceivable way for us to get ourselves out of the darkness. That was a HEAVY price to pay to rescue us, and it was once for all. Romans 6:23 (ESV) says this:

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God

is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

We were born into darkness. We deserve the darkness. There is no good deed or accomplishment that can get us out of the darkness. Only Jesus. And out of his unconditional, overwhelming, everlasting, steadfast, sacrificial love for us, he chose to pay the price, once and for all, for our rescue. If you have not already done so, my prayer is that you will make the transfer today. The transfer is free for us.