kayfromhome

We are a world of perspectives.  People divide over disagreements as quickly and easily as a hot knife cuts through soft butter.  

We choose sides.  We hurl insults.  We retweet pithy quotes and repost slanted articles or videos.  We roll our eyes as we make snide comments about the other side making snide comments; feigning the high road while hoping the other side falls low. 

Our opinion is king.  Our side is the right side.  Our platform is as large as our egos, and our voices will be heard.  After all, we are a righteously passionate people.

Children of God, hear me when I ask… did you know:

• We can disagree without disrespecting 
• We can disagree without disconnecting  
• We can disagree without deliberately undermining

Beloved, don’t you know that God’s servants are not called to be quarrelsome?  For what is righteousness without love?  And not love just for the outcast, the slave, and the underdog, but love for the opponent, the oppressor and the landowner?  Or what about love for the person that you don’t see eye to eye with? 

The body of Christ is a body of diversity, not disunity.  We certainly don’t have to be clones of one another, but we do have to be kind to one another. 

The Apostle Paul said, “I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”  (Eph. 4:1-3)

Brothers and sisters, instead of squabbling like siblings, we must seek to band together. The world is watching to see how we treat one another, as an indication of how we may treat them. Let us show them love. 

Let us be more eager to maintain unity, than to point out our differences. Let us keep our words sweet, lest we have to eat them later. 

In a world where everything from politics to personal preferences seeks to separate us, we must hold fast to the truth that there is more that unites us than there is that divides us. May the bond of peace be evident in our hearts, in our lives and in our speech. 

Amen.