In the movies, every important meeting starts with a clear “You may be wondering why I’ve called you here today.” Real meetings leave you guessing the whole time—and sometimes long after. We often treat God’s Word the same way, yet Ephesians 1 addresses the question head-on: why are you here?

We live in a world of constant flux, where nothing is truly stable and even the things that feel permanent haven’t been around that long. Yet Ephesians 1 takes us further back than any of it: God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world.

Are we going to be unified with the world or unified with the Lord? That’s the challenge that Paul hands down to us here.

God calls us to “civic” expressions of His love when elections go the way we hope and also when they do not.

As we come an election and contemplate how much those around us drive us crazy, God calls us to a different path as the church than what the world says we ought to do. We turn to 1 Timothy 2 for insights into the Lord’s plan for us in a partisan world.