Good morning…
Her email came in soon after I pushed “send” on yesterday’s post, What Are We Becoming? She is a dear friend who has educated herself well about politics over the years. Her political beliefs differ considerably from the political beliefs God is growing in me. I believe that for God’s eternal purposes my wise friend and I are planted in very different patches of the political spectrum.
Just like in a garden of colorful variety, our differing beliefs are no accident. God has drawn us to different readings, we nibble on different news feeds and we listen to different “experts.” We each prayerfully consider the world’s complicated issues, and we each focus on very different patches in the quilt of our humanity. The salvation of our friendship is that we each glance at the world’s messy chaos and, pulled by One powerful magnet, we each return our gaze to God.
“Good morning,” I returned her email right away. “There is so much ugliness in the world for us to focus upon right now. The world’s ways will never be God’s ways. So we each have daily choices to make. Will we glance at the world and lock our gaze on God, filtering all we think, feel, and do through our oneness with the Lord?”
“We may have different political beliefs,” I wrote, “that, to me, is a minor thing. The main focus for both of us is our eternal God, the living Christ active in our midst. As we keep our gaze on God Almighty, we will become the love, the peace, the gentle joy our hurting world so desperately needs. From our different places on the political spectrum, we are each designed to shine like light, holding in our hands the very word of life.”
“I love you and appreciate what we are learning side by side,” I concluded.
Do everything readily and cheerfully—no bickering, no second-guessing allowed! Go out into the world uncorrupted, a breath of fresh air in this squalid and polluted society. Provide people with a glimpse of good living and of the living God. Carry the light-giving Message into the night… (Philippians 2:15, MSG).
…Sue…
P.S. “Our post from today will hopefully paint some common ground for many,” I emailed her later. “We deepen down with God so that love, peace, and gentle joy can rise up from wherever we are on the political spectrum. I just read the Henri Nouwen devotional for this morning. I believe it tills very similar common ground.”
DAILY MEDITATION | MAY 21, 2022 – Community is Heart Calling to Heart by Henri Nouwen
Friendship, marriage, family, religious life, and every other form of community is solitude greeting solitude, spirit speaking to spirit, and heart calling to heart. It is the grateful recognition of God’s call to share life together and the joyful offering of a hospitable space where the re-creating power of God’s Spirit can become manifest. Thus all forms of life together can become ways to reveal to each other the real presence of God in our midst.
Community has little to do with mutual compatibility. Similarities in educational background, psychological makeup, or social status can bring us together, but they can never be the basis for community. Community is grounded in God, who calls us together, and not in the attractiveness of people to each other. . . . The mystery of community is precisely that it embraces all people, whatever their individual differences.
