Devotional:

Psalm 133.1

How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!

It is very good and pleasant when kindred live together in unity, but it rarely happens. Instead, in-laws fight over table decorations for wedding receptions, children argue over who received the most Christmas presents, and spouses argue about the strangest things until they lose their voices. Even beyond the nuclear family, kindred (in the larger sense) are divided over a great number of topics including politics, economics, and ethics.

I am convinced that for as much good as social networking and the 24-hours news cycle have brought into the world there is also just as much evil. In the wake of the recent tragedy in Charlottesville, VA people on every spot of the spectrum have come out to voice their particular opinion as if shouting into the void without a care as to who might hear it. I have friends, good friends, who posted on their Facebook pages some truly hateful language regarding the protestors and anti-protestors. One person said that the young woman who was murdered by the driver who drove into the crowd of people would still be alive if she wasn’t a fat-good-for-nothing trying to interrupt a “peaceful protest.” Another person wrote about how we should jail and/or physically punish all white republicans because they’re all “racists on the inside.” And still yet another person wrote about the need to reassert the values of “white America” over and against all other types of Americas.

And all of this was posted publicly for the world to see.

The psalmist declares, “How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!” Unity is a rare thing in the world today, let alone in our individual communities. Rather than seeking unity we almost always just spend our time with those who already have our opinion and instead of seeking to find common ground we stake our claim and dig deeper into our own ground.

As Christians we believe that the church is the better place that God has made in the world. For us, the church is the place where even though we do not think alike we can love alike. We sit down in pews with people who are of different opinions, we gather with them at the altar, and we are sent forth with them to be Christ’s hands and feet for the world. If we cannot have unity in the church, unity in a common purpose to love, then the world will continue to be a place of walls and divisions and disunity.

This week, as we continue to take steps in faith and seek God’s kingdom here on earth, let us join our voices together in a common prayer:

“Almighty God, help us to remember that before Jesus marched to the cross he prayed for his disciples that they might be one. In the same fellowship that is between you and your Son and your Spirit, in the same hope of the prayer that Jesus offered in the garden, we pray for unity in your Church, being bound together in love and obedience to you. Help us so to love you and one another that your kingdom might reign here on earth now and forever. Amen.”