Reflection:  Given what God has done for humans – vertically and horizontally – Paul turns to him in prayer – after all, as the ‘Father’ of the household, who else is the household dependent upon? Paul’s prayer is, first, for God to work in the lives of his people: to strengthen them by his Spirit and to enable them to accept the new landlord in their lives – Jesus (vs.16-17). Secondly, Paul’s prayer is for the Ephesians to grasp the magnitude of God’s love – the very same love that moved them from corpse to Christian (vs.17-19). The whole point of this prayer is so that God’s mob can display God to the world (vs.19). The prayer is so big that we need to be reminded of the bigness of God – he can do so much more than anything we can imagine (vs.20-21).

Question:  Take a moment to just read, and re-read, this prayer a few times. Compare it with so many prayers we offer and hear – ponder again how immense it is!

Prayer:  Father, you know where we live and what aches our bones and what we eat for breakfast – and you exercise power to raise Jesus from the dead so that we can have life we do not deserve. Please use that same power to make Jesus our landlord, to enable us to grasp your love, and to display your fullness to this world. Amen.