Every Tribe...

"After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb."  Revelation 7:9

A couple of months ago, my wife, Judith, and I went to a Christian concert in Houston.  It was a big, sold out event with thousands of people.  I noticed something different about this concert that I had not seen at previous Christian concerts - the crowd was much more ethnically diverse. 

Now Houston is a very diverse city.  I remember being sent to the grocery store while we were visiting in-laws there and I counted six different languages being spoken by the people in the aisles of Kroger.  This concert must have had people there from all over the world.  I sat next to a family that spoke Spanish listening to a band from Ireland singing about the love of God.  There were Asians, Africans, and some I did not recognize - quite literally as the children's song says, "red, brown, yellow, black and white."  I don't know if that would have happened just a few years ago.  But I am glad to have seen it happen now.

We started to leave the concert a little early, to beat the traffic but also because it takes me longer to get places now with this bum foot.  The best way to leave this outdoor pavilion was to exit near the stage area.  I looked back over the crowd as it rose up the slope of the hill and people seemed to extend all the way into the night sky.  They were standing and praising God.  I was reminded of John's experience in Revelation 7, "every nation, tribe, people and language."  It was a beautiful haunting sight and sound; a glimpse of heaven.  I wanted more and yet in that longing there was a sense of assurance that someday there will be.

A group of us have been praying for the Muslim world through this month of Ramadan. It has been an eye-opening challenge.  We will conclude things this week by hearing from one of our missionaries who has returned from a closed country in the Middle East.  All of this has gone to help me understand that God's love keeps getting bigger.  He cannot love us more than he already does, but he makes it possible for there to be more for him to love.  Let's see how big that love can be.

for the journey...

Tim

A Unit of Unity

This Sunday, we will look at unity.  How do you measure unity in a church?  You can measure baptisms and budgets.  You can count attendance and offerings.  You can list the value of buildings and property, but how do you measure unity? 

In the Bible there are measurements of "homers" and "talents."  There is never a mention of a homer of harmony or a talent of togetherness.  It does say, "they were all in one accord" but Honda has never released those numbers.  (Bad play on a really old joke, I'm sorry).

How can something so vital to the church be so immeasurable?  I do know this, when Hattie Marshall came to our church from a neighboring African-American Church, she and her husband Victor brought some diversity to our church.  Hattie had a unique voice, no one else sang like her, no one else shouted Hallelujah like her (no one else ever shouted but her) and no one else spoke quite like her.  But that difference, that diversity, brought a greater sense of unity.  We grew more diverse but not more divided, we became something more than what we had been and we became more unified.

Hattie went home to be with the Lord this morning.  She is now in a place where there will be people from every tribe and every tongue and every nation but that place is more unified than any place here on this earth.  In Christ, the greater the diversity, the greater the unity.   That is not what common sense would lead us to think - unity should come from uniformity - not with God.

Common sense would lead us to say then that we need to focus on diversity to get to unity but that is not the case either.  Unity and diversity are only possible in the church as we as individuals step out in faith as Christ leads.  Hattie always said that Jesus led her to our church.  No transition like that is easy but she came.  I really think Jesus did not lead her here for her but he led her here for us - and for a new sense of unity.  So the way to unity and the measure of it, is only something that happens when we obey Jesus.  Can someone say, "Hallelujah, thank you Jesus!"  Can you shout it today?  Hattie can.

for the journey...

Tim