Focus

Experience silence in the midst of your busy day. Take some time to relax into a time to be with God.

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Read

Ephesians 4:1-6 (NRSV)

I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all lowliness and meekness, with patience, forbearing one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all.

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Reflect

Since fall of 2012 I have been working on the Unification Task Force to unite the Cumberland Presbyterian Church and Cumberland Presbyterian Church in America denominations. This text is one we’ve read together multiple times, turning it over and over in our minds as if it were a magic box with a key hidden inside. Maybe if we said it enough times, we would cease to be separate and somehow be one.

Paul is still calling us to lead a life worthy of the calling to which God has called us, but we fail. Do our failures mean that we should stop trying to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace? NO! When I get frustrated, I find comfort knowing that even when we are not bearing with one another in love through unity, God, who is One, is above all and through all and in all. All are One, whether we like to see it that way or not.

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Pray

God of love, we need you. You are in everything, yet we try to push you out. Our egos think they can prevail in issues of power and principal, but we are fools. Unite us, God, through your Spirit. Cast a vision for us that we may work joyously toward oneness in you. For it is in you that we all live and move and have our being. Amen.

Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.