After Unity, Then What?
If you’ve been following my posts thru this week you will have noticed an emphasis on unity, acceptance of those with differing determinations of conscience on disputable matters, and of reconciliation as an essential soil for unified fellowship. Our World needs unity, our Nation needs unity, our communities need unity and God has called His Church to unity that we might be the sowers of unity to all.
“That we might be the sowers of unity to all” — Catch this vision with me. It is the vision of our Lord… Hear Him praying for you… for you… His Church,
“I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours… they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name… so that they may be one as we are one. …My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. …As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world….”
“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (John 17:9-23, selected portions).
Jesus wants us from our unity to go out into this world and touch it for Christ.
In pandemics past this is exactly What the Church of Christ has done. Instead of looking inward, unified congregants sought to bring aid to the suffering. What a great opportunity this is to share the eternal hope that we have in Christ. Suffering and death need not alarm us. Though we take wise precaution to guard against illness, to eat and sleep and exercise, “we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.” (2 Cor. 5:1). There, there will be plenty of forever to go around… plenty of forever to sing and to worship then. Now, here, we have but a short time to reach outward. Then, there, we will have no such opportunity.
Lord, bring Your great Church to unity that we may glorify Your Name!
Press on…
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