Today’s reading from the Letter to the Colossians refers to Christ as “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible . . .” Echoes of that very language are heard in the creed that we say each time that we gather around the Lord’s Table. I love what former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has written about this in his book Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief:

Belief in a Creator of all things visible and invisible is in fact something of deeply practical and personal meaning. It is about the possibility of an integrated life — not a life where some bits of us have to be covered up or swept under the carpet. ‘Visible and invisible’ means something for the life of each one of us, you see. There are the things in my life that I’m aware of, there are things I’m not aware of — and there are things that I try not to be aware of, that I’m ashamed of or frightened by. But all that I am is the working out of what God has made; some of it has worked out well, some not so well; I have learned to make good use of some of what God has given me and I’ve made a mess of some of the rest or just haven’t come to terms with it. Saying that God has made us in our entirety and is concerned about all of us isn’t, incidentally, the same as saying that anything we choose to do is fine — only that every aspect of who we are needs to be brought into the circle of God’s light, because he can deal with all of it.