Unity in Diversity

God loves us and wants us to realize we are all a precious creation, God's children, and partners with Jesus in the caring, healing, teaching, and saving of this world. Identifying us as partners with Jesus is not how most of us see ourselves when we think about the work Jesus is doing to love and save humanity.

We often think of ourselves more like assistants to God and followers of Jesus' teachings, but not partners with Jesus. Being partners with Jesus would mean we would be more like spiritual and life guides who lead people through the winding difficult maze that this world has forced us to travel.

Do you think of yourselves as a community of believers who are determined to be faithful to God's mission who through Jesus' love and sustaining power can collectively overcome the hardships that we must face together in this world? I hope so, because we are experiencing a rise in sharply divisive and even combative behavior locally, across the nation, and the Earth.

We have seen and heard people do heroic things to help others in need, and organizations that go to great lengths to bridge groups of people that formerly have never been in positive connection with each other. Many of those people and organizations are celebrated for their selfless work for their respective communities and lifted as shining examples of what we all should be doing, especially those who are partners with Jesus.

Then we turn to our favorite media outlet where we see and hear about other people and organizations that seem to make their living being bent on tearing people down and destabilizing this world's most positive and upbuilding beliefs and representative governing systems, often for no other reason than they attribute their behavior to a person or organization that lives that way and tells them to do so.

We can and should do better. 1 Corinthians 1:10-18 tells of the response to some sharp divisions in the body of believers that grew after Jesus died, (and rose again, by the Apostle Paul) who was sent by Jesus as his partner/servant to help those people live and love as he did. What can we learn from that response for our present day?