Your last lecture...

Dr. Randy Pausch gave an amazing 'last lecture' when he was diagnosed with Pancreatic cancer. It is inspirational to watch and challenging to think,

'If I were facing my own end, what would I want my last lecture to be?'

The apostle Paul gave several last lectures if you will, his letters from prison while he was under house arrest in Rome. Philippians, Colossians, Philemon & perhaps the most powerful of all, Ephesians give us a glimpse of what Paul saw as most important to pass along.

What would your last lecture be?
What letters & papers would you leave behind that tell of life's most important lessons for you?

Where were you going in life before?
Where are you going in life now?
Why are you going there?

Ephesians 2:1-6,16-22
It wasn't so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It's a wonder God didn't lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah...

Christ brought us together through his death on the cross. The Cross got us to embrace, and that was the end of the hostility. Christ came and preached peace to you outsiders and peace to us insiders. He treated us as equals, and so made us equals. Through him we both share the same Spirit and have equal access to the Father.

That's plain enough, isn't it? You're no longer wandering exiles. This kingdom of faith is now your home country. You're no longer strangers or outsiders. You belong here, with as much right to the name Christian as anyone. God is building a home. He's using us all—irrespective of how we got here—in what he is building. He used the apostles and prophets for the foundation. Now he's using you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone that holds all the parts together. We see it taking shape day after day—a holy temple built by God, all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home.