Full Buckets – Colossians 3:15

Text: Colossians 3:15

The surest sign that you’re carrying a full bucket is wet feet.

Are your feet wet?

Like buckets, our hearts tend to spill what’s in them, and that’s Paul’s point in this verse: “And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body” (Colossians 3:15).

I suppose most of us struggle with the absence of peace.

• I’ll never get all this stuff done.
• How will my kids turn out?
• What if I lose my job?
• What will the MRI reveal?

And we fret and wring our hands and take more antacids.

We feel unsettled, distracted, nervous, and all this usually manifests itself in our interactions with others. We become distant or withdrawn, or perhaps irritable, even with the people we love the most, or perhaps especially with them.

Only it’s not supposed to be like that.

“Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts,” Paul wrote. The word rule often referred to an umpire in a game and meant to control (Kittel).

In other words, Paul is saying that our hearts should be governed, ordered, controlled by peace.  But how?

It won’t happen when you seek it on your own. You’ll never get everything in your life arranged perfectly so that peace naturally comes.

Peace in your heart will come when you’re filled with the peace of Christ.

Then your feet will be wet. Then you’ll feel peace and live peace and radiate peace.

Today, for a few minutes, pause and empty your heart of all anxieties and distractions and ask the Lord to give you his peace, to fill you with peace. Ask him to let it rule your life.  It’s what he wants, of course.

Shortly before he died he left us with these words: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (John 14:27).
I hope your feet get wet today.