Reigning as Christ

I gave the following as a faculty devotion. It's been edited for posting here.

“As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame”
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.
I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.

What we do is consistent with who we are. Each creature does what he is--acts outwardly what he is inwardly. And who we are, Hopkins says--if we are that just man of grace (that man justified, or made just, by grace)--is Christ.

So who are we? Christ. And what does Christ do? Well, he reigns.

"Against all these aberrations it is necessary to state the traditional doctrine in all its apparent impossibility and to bear the reproach which orthodoxy always invites. For orthodox Christology, in its developed no less than in its Biblical stage, is to the Jews a stumbling-block and to the Greeks foolishness; but to them that are saved, both Jews and Greeks, it is Christ the Power of God and the Wisdom of God." -E.L. Mascall in Christ, The Christian, and the Church