THE WAY TO UNITY

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had, so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Romans 15:5-6

This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Will we ever be able to come back together again and live as a united people?

It’s a question I hear posed over and over again these days as we try to navigate what seems like unprecedented times of division in our country. Sure, there have been issues in the past that have caused people to pick and choose sides but what makes these times different is that there are a multitude of matters happening simultaneously which are causing their own individual schisms.

We’re fragmented politically, Democrat from Republican, left from right, liberal from conservative. To make matters worse, we are even seeing fractures within a political party as progressives seek to break out against their liberal counterparts.

In case you haven’t noticed, we’re dealing with a pandemic right now, a pandemic that has caused its own separations. Masked or unmasked, vaccinated or unvaccinated. Society seems to fall on one side or the other, bent on their point of view being the right one.

We could go on and on with other hot button items like climate control, gun control, social justice, immigration reform, racial and/or gender equity, or abolishing police. One doesn’t need to look too far if they want to jump into the fray of a debate these days and therein is the problem. It’s easier to find reason to be divisive than it is to be united, unless you call being linked with like-minded people against others who hold a different perspective as being in one accord.

Now, I think what I have written so far is an accurate depiction of our current cultural climate but note what is missing. There is no mention of God in any of this and that’s because you don’t hear God at the center of any hot button matter in society with the exception of abortion.

Herein is the root of our problem with dissent, conflict, and discord in our nation. We have pushed God out of the discussion. There’s no checking in with God as to what He sees as the right way to approach things. Rather, people foolishly lean on their own wisdom and intellect to try and deal with life’s challenges.

How’s that working out?

If you think everything is great, I’m afraid you’re not being objective or a realist. The truth of the matter is that we have to get better or we’re going to destroy our country from the inside out. There’s no time to delay.

So how can we turn this around? What’s the way back to unity?

The answer can be found in our scripture passage from verses 5 and 6 of Romans 15. There Paul writes:

May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had, so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Here we find unity starts with God and God alone. He is the Lord who grants endurance and encouragement to His people, the Lord who drives us to build people up vice tear them down.

When we are like-minded through God and seek to relate to one another, God blesses us with the same mind attitude of Jesus, His Son, and when armed with that attitude, we will share one mind and voice which glorifies and honors God, the Father of us all.

In other words, when we commit to live in accord with God leading the way, He leads us away from the matters of the world to glorify Him first, trusting that He will show us the way to work our way through life’s trials and tests. Then we can attack matters as one people under God and when we are truly one people under His charge and care, then we will become the polar opposite of who we are right now.

We will become a people who are indivisible because we serve a God who leads us on the way to unity.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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