We Are One in Him and Thus Family

I left for a few days this past weekend only to hear of the unrest in many of our major cities across America. Race and injustice emerge as a flashpoint among us. We are reminded that race for those following Christ is an amalgamation; we are one in Him and thus family. Period! If you ask the Gospel to identify the problems that hinder us as human beings, those same things that manifest themselves in social ills. So, the Gospel reminds us that we are all created in the image of God, but we are rebellious and sinful. It is a fact that when I look into the face of my neighbor, all my neighbors, I am seeing someone who is made for God. Indeed I am beholding someone for whom Jesus came to rescue. The basis of how I treat my neighbor then should be found in how I am treated by God. I should graciously love others because He first loved me. I am quick to forgive because He forgave me. I take the ways of true kindness seriously because of God’s loving-kindness toward me. If God withholds His wrath from me, then I will not give my heart to wrath (or pride, greed, lusts, envy, or other vices for that matter). Kingdom virtue is to be sown into the world from me, filled with the Holy Spirit, like salt to enrich my world and so my world may flourish in the blessings of God. I am called to treat all like I would like to be treated or have been treated by God. This is being reconciled into the one family of God through Christ.

Barry

Living as Christians in a broken world is hard and it begins with living for others.

The past couple of months have been tough; a pandemic has ravaged across the globe and our normal routines have been disrupted and inconvenienced. Concurrently, a senseless killing has incited protests and riots throughout our country. Our behaviors, in both situations, concern me. Are we becoming a society short on self-discipline, disrespectful of rules of law, and lacking wisdom? We resist protocols intended to protect others and blatantly violate the limits of civil disobedience with concern for my perspective and mine only and seldom consider the effects on others.  

Wisdom is a big thing in the Bible and Jesus lived a life that exemplified wisdom in its purest form. Jesus was all about us living in ways that are synergistic with The Holy by loving God and loving others. James put it this way, “Where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will be disorder and wickedness of every kind. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.” (James 3:16-18)

Living as Christians in a broken world is hard and it begins with living for others. Let me share some examples from the past:

Jesus: “Love one another as I have loved you.”

St. Francis of Assisi

“Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love, where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy. O, Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love.  For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Charles D. Meigs: 

“Lord, help me live from day to day in such a self-forgetful way that even when I kneel to pray, my prayer shall be for __ OTHERS. Help me in all the work I do to ever be sincere and true and know that all I’d do for you, must needs be done for __ OTHERS. Let “Self” be crucified and slain, and buried deep; and all in vain may efforts be to rise again unless to live for __ OTHERS.

And when my work on earth is done, and my new work in Heaven’s begun, May I forget the crown I’ve won, while thinking still of __ OTHERS. __ Others, Lord, yes, others. Let this my motto be, help me to live for others, that I may live like Thee.”

Christian living is wisdom living. Lord, teach me how…….. Blessings, Mike.