Acts 17: 28a “For in him we live, and move, and have our being;”
Paul is in Athens and sees “the city wholly given to idolatry.”(vs. 16) He begins disputing in the synagogues with many “devout persons”(vs. 17). There were people there whose whole life was spent to “either tell or hear some new thing”(vs.21) They were “superstitious” and worshiped many gods, including “the unknown god”. (vs22-23) Paul taught them of the “God that made the world.”(vs. 24) and goes all the way through to the judgment to come and the assurance of the resurrection.(vs. 31-32) Some mocked but some believed. Right in the middle of Paul’s explanation of who God is he says, “for in him we live, and move, and have our being.” Now obviously this is meant in a physical sense. Yes, we have life because God gave us life and sustains our life, but this verse can also strike a spiritual cord. I guess you could say it can give us pause, to have some perspective. As we go through our lives and about our daily business doing all the right things, all the good things, are we living “in him”. It can be so easy to go into auto pilot. If we are not careful we can almost become robotic. Not intentionally, not even with a bad spirit, but we are doing all the things and checking off all the boxes of things to be done without giving our full attention or full spiritual awareness to them. Stop and think about it for a minute. “For in him we live, and move, and have our being.” Are we truly living “in him”? Do we truly have our “being in him”? Are we captivated with what Christ did for us and what he is to us on a daily basis? Lamentations 3:22-25, “It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is they faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him. The Lord is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him.”