Listen

You are one body and one spirit, just as God also called you in one hope. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father of all, who is over all, through all, and in all.

Ephesians 4:4-6

Think

People like to label, order, and categorize things. We make to-do lists, rank our favorite teams, make a list of our top picks of where we want to go to college, etc. When we cross off a to-do on our checklist, it makes us feel like productive people! There is no denying that making lists helps us to create order in the midst of chaos.

Sometimes this practice of labeling creeps into our personal lives and we begin to create lists to categorize people, even ourselves. We label people as “belonging” or “not belonging” based on their social identity. We judge ourselves as being worthy or unworthy of love based on past mistakes. Without realizing it, we spend our lives developing a big list that divides people up into groups.

Our passage from Ephesians reminds us to forget all about that. There is only one God who is in ALL of us, regardless of social status. The same God who dwells in those who “belong” also dwells in those who don’t. We are all ONE body and ONE spirit.

Jon Chacko

Pray

God, help me to understand that the divisions between people are human-made. May we realize that we are one body and one people, eternally held by God who loves us – labels and all. Amen.

Go

We are here to help each other
Walk the mile and bear the load.

Richard Gillard in “The Servant Song” (1977)