Friday, February 05, 2010

Break dividing walls

While I was in the UK, I was considering the deep beauty and mystery of cross cultural missions. Not just in the example of people leaving to serve overseas, but just the deep reconciliation and understanding across gender, across colour, across ethnicity, across socio-economic class and culture.
There is something so heart-achingly beautiful in watching someone struggling to deliberately shed one's own skin and baggage in order to try to put on another one.
Perhaps it's because it isn't seen that often. Perhaps it's because it is far too hard. Perhaps it's because it is far easier, far more comfortable, to love those who are 'like'. Look like me. Talk like me. Eat like me. Dress like me. Walk like me. Socialize like me. Spend money like me. Understand the world like me. Hate the same things like me. Believe things like me.
We have been called to be bridge-builders, to be ambassadors for the ministry of reconciliation, to be those who stand in the gap, to be those who no longer see male nor female, slave nor free, Jew nor Gentile.
Yet we do see. And distinguish. And divide. So the question remains: how to bring that beauty, that mystery, of the power of reconciliation? How to be so humble that those dividers, those walls, are broken, to bring about true community, true Kingdom?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

what were you doing in england?