Unity

"The most difficult lie I have ever contended with is this: life is a story about me."
-Don Miller

There are a lot of opinions floating around the blog-verse, about the right answer to numerous quandaries and controversies. Each of the topics have sparked a wide variety of responses, and they range from full of love to full of malice. Currently, Rachel Held Evans is the driving force behind a "Rally to Restore Unity", and it got me thinking about what that unity looks like in light of our "virtual water-cooler discussions".

Got an opinion or idea about heaven or hell or Osama or Obama? What makes a good politician or what should those values look like? How about earthquakes, evangelicals, unity or proper ways to react to others around us? Who is Christian enough, or too Christian or too liberal, conservative or too indecisive? These are all open to interpretation and criticism-and if someone will listen, someone else will tell you what they think.

But who is asking? Who is listening? What does it look like to someone outside of the Christian-a-verse in blogs and on twitter and book-face and everything else in-between? Have we effectively argued our way into a conversation that looks nothing like the conversations Jesus would have us partake in? What do our interactions look like for those who need to hear the words of Jesus the most?

I struggle with telling my side of "how it is" because, really-it is just my opinion, isn't it? And when I strike down a flagpole of what I believe, I choose a side, and that effectively labels everything else wrong or a non-truth because it isn't my view, it isn't my way.

I am tired of choosing sides, tired of needing to think the right way or say the right things about stuff that doesn't tie into who Jesus is and how I can be his hands and feet. How much minutia do we swim around in, only to miss the focus, the mission, the ways we can unite as one?

Donald Miller, in the quote above, says it well-when "I am" is the focus-I miss out on "I AM", I miss out on you, I miss out on us and the story and the opportunity for the unity we could have as God's people-as His segula-as His treasured possession. That is the unity I want-with the Creator and with you. Let's stop being individual pieces of trinket. Let's be His treasure.

"For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be His people, His treasured possession." Deut. 7:6