Great Big God...

I was reading Colossians the other day and one of the last verses says,

"And when this letter has been read among you, have it read also in the church of the Laodiceans; and see that you read also the letter from Laodicea."

(Colossians 3:16, NRSV)

There IS no letter to the Laodiceans in the New Testament. That got me thinking, of course... What is Paul talking about? Where is the letter? Why is this here?

Now, I remember Church history classes and the fights over the canon - what books would be included, were the letters authentic, the compromises (like Revelation being included only if Hebrews was included - an East/West battle), and so on. I mean, there's a very human aspect to the whole collection of the canon and the determination of what was included and what wasn't included.

So I did a search (Google, my new best friend...heh) and I came across several sites that purport to have copies of this "Lost Epistle." One site alleges that in 1844 a man by the name of Jakob Lorber wrote out the lost letter "by means of the Inner Voice." Another site suggests that "for centuries Bibles used to contain a small Epistle from Paul to the Laodiceans...." This site suggests that there are 100 Latin manuscripts containing this letter, 18 German bibles, even "a very old translation of this Epistle in the British Museum, among the Harleian MSS., Cod. 1212." Note that this epistle and Lorber's are (not surprisingly) irreconcilable...

Many sites suggest that Paul's letter to Ephesus is probably the "missing" letter - renamed, or misnamed at it was transmitted...

So what? Well... Does it matter that there is this hanging reference in the Bible? Does this missing letter have to be found for the canon to be complete?

I believe completely that the collection of books, letters, poems, histories, biographical accounts, etc. that make up the Bible as we have it today is complete. I KNOW that it seems to have gone through human hands many, many times (who edited the Torah, for example? I mean there's clearly evidence of more than one hand there - "So Abraham called that place 'The Lord will provide' ;as it is said to this day, 'On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.' [Genesis 22:14]" OR the collection of the Psalms or was Isaiah the only author of the book that bears his name? And on and on it goes...).

The thing is, God works through us. Sometimes God works with us, sometimes God works around us, sometimes God works in spite of us -- but God still does the working. God is bigger than a committee, God is bigger than Diet (heh, in even the modern sense of that word), God is bigger than even the worst intentions that we can have. And God will make His will be done - even if it is by a hundred different committees over a thousand years...or whatever the process.

That's not to say that we cannot try to thwart God's will (it is, as 2 Peter says, God's will that ALL MIGHT BE SAVED...obviously, not all have been saved...) but God can, and I believe does bend history to His greater purpose. While I don't believe He will coerce us into salvation - I believe He will at times use circumstances to push us (heh - just ask Jonah about that one) toward His ultimate plan.

Of course, this is a hard concept. But it is all about God's soveriegnty. If God is in control, how much is He in control?

Where does my will come into this?

And what does all this have to do with a missing letter to Laodicea? Well, maybe not as much as I thought it would when I started... Or maybe it does. Do we have to have that letter to accept the canon as complete? Or can we trust that God has given us all that we need to "work out [our] own salvation with fear and trembling?" And does that open a whole new can of worms?