“ Once you were alienated from God
and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.
But now He has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body
through death to present you holy in His sight,
without blemish and free from accusation—
if you continue in your faith,
established and firm,
and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. ”
Colossians 1:21-23a (NIV)
T
“Once” – past tense, no longer alienated. It means despite my failures, He won’t disown me. I am still His. Isn’t that a lot of hope, just in those first few words of this verse?
“Holy” – without blemish – in Jesus’ sight. That is hard to wrap my mind around. Even with the struggles, stresses, and sins that still catch me, I will be brought before God, without blemish and free from accusation. This is big for me, because I can struggle so much to “be right” and feel so misunderstood, and yet, for eternities perspective, if I could learn to let go of things more . . . it does not really matter so often . . .God knows and HE is enough! And because of this, I am I am firmly established with Him. I cannot be yanked away from Him. The ties won’t be broken!
And when I question, wonder where I am . . . where He is . . . I am reminded by that still small voice, to not move from the hope held out in the gospel. There’s always hope.

Oh YES … Seriously WHERE would we be without HOPE!! I love that you picked up on the word HOPE. I’m also longing for ‘eternities perspective”
Thanks for stopping by and for the encouragement!
Shelley
Beautiful interpretation of the verse Loni. Hope is the fuel that makes so much of our daily lives possible.
Thanks for joining the conversation. I’ve added your link at my site.
Thank you for this beautiful reminder that there is always hope when we know Christ!
Hope, that is a very big thing to have. Reading this scripture has that written all over it. What we were is past tense what we can be in Christ is our future. Praise the Lord.