October was an interesting full month. We spent a wonderful weekend with family up north. I attending a funeral. There was a business trip I took to go to a conference where most of the people there spent several days with a big group of people we didn't know before we got there. I watch groups form in healthy and unhealthy ways. One Saturday my plans got rearranged because a friend needed a ride. That diversion added to my life but I also didn't get things done that I had planned to do and that affected me also. I've been reading some wonderful Quaker writers who come at things from an angle I am not used to but have weighty things to say.
I sit here now thinking about why people come together, why we split apart and How God is involved in all of it. To find answers and definition I go to the scriptures and look there. I know I have biases and if I want to find real answers the scripture is where God will speak to me. My mathematics is flawed. My theology can become self-justifying.
At one point the nation that arose from Abraham's offspring split into two nations Israel and Judah. People got polarized and two groups formed. Both Israel and Judah ending up captive to foreign powers but they were brought into captivity at different times. Solomon was the last king to rule over a unified nation.
The reasons we split apart are many but in October I saw people come together at that funeral. I saw it happen at the conference and on our family trip. I met with people because a friend had a need. There was a cost involved in all of these ventures.
I sit here now conspiring with God and asking Him to give me creativity. Funerals bring people together that might not ever get together but are in one place on that one day. That is one way things happen but I want to see people joined in happier ways and for happier reasons don't you?
Help us God. Bring us together. We can form groups based on preference but that actually leads to divisions. Your cause has a purity found nowhere else. You bring life out of death.
"But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all. Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony." - Colossians 3:8-14 ESV
In Christ that which was separate becomes one.
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