Pulling Together as a Family in Christ
One of the things that have been hardest about this year, if I’m honest, is the way that I have seen the people around me divide. Maybe that doesn’t sound right in English, but what I mean is, it has felt like this has been a time of dividing, division.
Are you in this group?
Are you in that one?
Do you believe this?
How can you believe that?
It doesn’t even seem to matter where I am physically located. Everywhere I turn, division.
- Family members trying to be careful about how they speak because someone will get ruffled.
- Difficulty being yourself in ‘church’ (whatever that looks like!) because of such strong feelings about this approach to an issue or that question being so intense a concern. Risking saying anything in an online setting for the genuine fear of getting burned.
- My Ukrainian friends misunderstand hesitation to do social things as mistrust or lack of faith or worse, some weird accusation of uncleanliness. It’s overwhelming. As the months of this year have worn on, I have felt like everything is becoming more and more irreparably fractured.
And then…
The Lord speaks to me quietly with peace and tenderness, “No. There is a beautiful thing I am doing. It’s hard to see it, but I am working. I am acting in all of this. Don’t let your sense of division be truth to you. Fix your eyes on me.”
And that’s what Jesus did.
Hebrews 12:1-3 says that He fixed his eyes on something ahead of him, something not visible in the moment, “the joy set before him“. He calls me to fix my eyes on him, to throw off everything that hinders me and the sin that so easily entangles, and to run with perseverance, just like He did.
Thoughts?
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Join us this month as we explore a #WVSimpleChristmas together. You can download resources and the devotional here.