How good and pleasant it is
    when God’s people live together in unity!
Psalm 133:1 (NIV)

Over the past few years, I’ve had the honor of leading a team of teachers in my local gathering of Jesus’ followers. They are a diverse and gifted group of people, representing paid staff members and volunteers of different ages, denominational backgrounds, gender, vocations, educational levels, and personalities.

Almost every week, I assign the group a message to watch on the internet. We’ve watched teachers and preachers from the National Cathedral to small rural towns. We’ve watched teachers of different styles, traditions, denominations, backgrounds, and abilities. We gather for lunch once a month to discuss what we’ve heard, observed, and learned from the different teachers and preachers we’ve watched. It’s been a really interesting experience.

In the first century, the followers of Jesus used the metaphor of a body to describe all believers. My experience of leading our local teaching team has given me a deeper appreciation for, and awareness of, just how beautiful and powerful that word picture is. The body is made up of eleven different systems. The systems do their thing and have various parts that provide particular functions unrelated to other systems, yet without them providing that function the health of the entire body suffers.

I’ve observed that the different members of our teaching team, each with his or her own communication style, personality, and waypoint on life’s journey, resonate deeply with different constituencies within our local “body” but less so with others. I find this to be natural and healthy for the “body” which benefits by learning from and appreciating different voices and perspectives. I’ve come to meditate quite a bit about unity.

Today’s chapter, Psalm 133, was another one of the songs that ancient Hebrew pilgrims sang as they and thousands of their fellow tribe made the trek to seasonal festivals in Jerusalem. It’s a short little ditty celebrating national unity that would have resonated with the travelers as they encountered fellow citizens making the same trek alongside them.

Along my life journey, I’ve come to understand that unity does not mean sameness. In fact, it doesn’t mean agreement. I am grieved by the level of discord, dissension, conflict, and “cancellation” in our culture of late. I was raised to be respectful of differences in people and appreciative of the opportunity to learn from those differences. As a follower of Jesus, those beliefs have been strengthened and reinforced in me by Jesus’ teaching that calls me to humbly be gracious; To love, forgive, and serve others, especially those whom I might otherwise consider my “enemy.”

Increasingly, I’ve come to realize that spiritually speaking, I am a very minute part of a massive, complex “body” made up of different systems, organs, limbs, and cells. There are parts of the body I don’t touch, and will never interact with. There are parts of the body with completely different functions than mine. There are other systems of the body I don’t fully understand and with whom I observe we are totally different in almost every way. Nevertheless, we are part of a “whole” that may well be beyond my human comprehension.

In yesterday’s post I wrote about things I control and things that I don’t. I can’t control others who choose to live in anger, stir conflict, and sow division and dishonor with anyone who looks, thinks, believes and/or lives differently. It’s unhealthy for the whole, and yet I can only control the part I play in my little part of that whole.

And so, I head out on another day of the journey, choosing to do the best I can to live in love, stir understanding, and sow peace with those I meet along the road on this pilgrimage called life.