When the Son of God came into the world it was then, and still is now, a world of setbacks and disappointments and of what people blandly call “negative” influences.  Looking back on our own lives we can no doubt discern negative influences on them. We might wish that we had been brought up in a different neighbourhood or gone to different schools or learnt different musical instruments and so on.

Looking back also on the choices we ourselves made, we might regret some of them.  Running through any negatives or regrets however, most of us can see even a tenuous line of circumstances that unbeknown to us as we walked through them, had a profoundly positive guiding influence on our life.

They as well as the immediately positive things witness to a Fatherly presence that holds up our universe.

A life in the charge of Christ in God is enabled to live consistently with this “universe”, that fabric of Fatherly guidance with which our lives have been directed to their present point.

Sin causes us to break our universe.  The grace of God in Christ enables us to hold it together or make repairs where it is broken.

Colossians chapter 3 verse 12 counsels us to “put on” various ethical and moral virtues such as compassion, kindness, meekness, holiness and forbearance.

This teaches us that to build and repair our God-given universe requires action arising from positive intention. It doesn’t happen automatically.

We do not, for instance, progress in such virtues if we do not mean to “put them on” (in St Paul’s phrase) and make them controlling factors of our own behaviour.

At the same time St Paul, in verses 9 and 10, makes it clear that he is addressing those who have put off the old man or old nature, and have put on the new nature.

He is referring to the theological change of being faithfully within the fellowship or communion of the body of Christ through baptism.

The moral and ethical progress that St. Paul outlines for us is only in view if the theological change has already been accomplished.

That theological change is our contact with the already restored universe that has been granted to us in Christ.

The ethical and moral progressive change is necessary now to deepen and extend and make repairs to that restored universe over all our life and relationships.

Our Lord’s growth in wisdom and years and favour before God and man (Luke 2: 52) and the boy Samuel’s growth in stature and favour with the Lord and with men, (1 Sam 2:26) provide good pictures of the growth those who are baptised are called to. The boy Samuel’s growth, according to the account, was within the sanctuary at Shiloh, ministering to the Lord in the presence of Eli the priest.

His mother also continued to show her care for this special child, but there were negative influences on his life too.

Samuel had to distinguish the path of life he was called to from the path of life of Eli’s natural successors, and as the account unfolds we see the grace of the Lord in a personal revelation to Samuel strengthening him to continue making good choices and judgments.

The whole life of Samuel as recounted in the Old Testament demonstrates the priority of the theological influences over the ethical and moral influences in the growth and progress of this remarkable man of God.

For him as for us, to be guided by principles of goodness is good, but it is solely within the gift of God Himself to grant the power to perform the principles.

In the case of the Lord Jesus, as if to remind us about Samuel, St Luke refers to His growth in wisdom and stature after the incident of the 12-year-old Jesus listening to and questioning the rabbis in the Jerusalem temple.

The overwhelming factor in Jesus’ life and development to adulthood was the fact and His consciousness of who His Father was, the great theological influence upon His life.  He was surprised that when Mary and Joseph arrived they did not know that He must be in His Father’s house.

God’s Son had perspectives on God that even his closest family could not fully share. Nevertheless he went home to Nazareth with His parents and was obedient to them. His theological insight did not break the universe of the Holy Family, but strengthened it.

The baptised are also called, just as our Lord was, to differ from the neighbourhood around them primarily in their theological perspective.

By faithfully identifying with Christ in our baptism and with the Church, a new nature, a new man, has been granted to us.

Now we have the opportunity and the exhilarating privilege of “putting on” and exercising the virtues proper to the new man, so that not only we but our “neighbourhood” too, our village, our country, our civilisation and our world, get built consistently with the universe that God has given us.

This is Christ’s wonderful work for us for the seventh year of the third millennium, and our high and joyful calling.

For commentary, information and devotional material see www.churchofenglandcayman.com and www.anglicansatprayer.org