diversity on Death

Spirit of the Living God—Fall afresh on us this day. Spirit of God present and powerful, Spirit of God fruitful and faithful, Spirit of God filling and fulfilling us as children of the Father and foll...

Notes on the Passage Besieged from All Angles:  The context of this passage is best summed up with the words recorded throughout the letter: Trouble, Distress, Suffering, Hardship, Death at work, Ja...

Preaching Commentary Besieged from All Angles The context of this passage is best summed up with the words recorded throughout the letter: Trouble, Distress, Suffering, Hardship, Death at work, Jar...

Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? A Diverse Early Church From the start, the early church was a mix of people from different backgrounds, traditions, and classes.  We...

Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? A Diverse Early Church From the start, the early church was a mix of people from different backgrounds, traditions, and classes.  We se...

Across all barriers of land and language, wealth and poverty, knowledge and ignorance, we are one, created from the same dust, subject to the same laws, and destined for the same end. With this compas...

God of all nations and peoples, Lord of all places and lands, who didst form man of the dust of the ground, and make of him a living soul, we praise thee for the infinite variety of thy human creature...

We must recognize, however, that this calling to be a diverse community that truly represents the kingdom of God requires great sacrifice. The deeply seated demonic power of racism cannot be overthrow...

O God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus your Son: Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the ...

Father God–You are a God of grace and abundance, who blesses us with more than a shower of blessings but a downpour of mercies. We rejoice with friends in new marriages, and in the strength of lasting...

Hating skin color is contempt for God's divine creative imagination. Honoring it is appreciation for conscious, beautiful-love-inspired diversity.

Lord–bless your people this day. God our Father—in Your love and compassion; Jesus, God the Son–with Your grace and truth; Spirit of God–in Your power and with Your love. Triune God, pour out Your bou...

The South African politician Nic Diederichs—a prominent leader during the apartheid era—once made a rather provocative observation: God, he said, dislikes deadly uniformity. I hate to admit that I lik...

Lord, you whose Son did pray that all your children might be one, we come with repentance for the sin of useless division and for the secret vice of pride. We beg forgiveness for harsh judgment, for p...

Gracious God, in Christ Jesus, you teach us to love our neighbors but instead we build dividing walls of hostility. You show us how to love one another as sisters and brothers but instead we hide from...

Lord—you not only know all things... You notice all things. You notice when we are joyful—and You laugh, too. You notice when we are in grief or despair—and you cry with us. When we are alone or confu...

We need to give each other the space to grow, to be ourselves, to exercise our diversity. We need to give each other space so that we may both give and receive such beautiful things as ideas, openness...

Lord, we come before you this day as part of the human family. Inspire us, O God; open our hearts. We come in our diversity to catch your vision of unity. Inspire us, O God; open our eyes. We ...

Summary of the Text Ancient Context What’s the historical context? The Tower of Babel The story of the Tower of Babel comes after many chapters relating the story of Noah, the flood, and the ...

In Christ there is no East or West, In Christ no South or North; But one great family of love Throughout the whole wide earth. In Christ shall true hearts everywhere Their high communion find; H...

He who is different from me does not impoverish me - he enriches me. Our unity is constituted in something higher than ourselves - in Man... For no man seeks to hear his own echo, or to find his refle...

There may be said to be two classes of people in the world; those who constantly divide the people of the world into two classes, and those who do not.

Lord, we come before you this day as part of the human family. Inspire us, O God; open our hearts. We come in our diversity to catch your vision of unity. Inspire us, O God; open our eyes. We ...

Holy and just Lord, we come before you today guilty. Guilty of reducing Jesus in our minds and hearts. At times we make him our personal savior, forgetting that his love and mercy are for all tongues,...

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.

I’m tired of recommending young minority leaders to serve on white church staffs, and watching them get used as tokens to show how “serious” the church is about diversity, only to see it end very badl...

This is the beautiful community that Herman Bavinck gets at when he writes, The image of God is much too rich for it to be fully realized in a single human being, however richly gifted that human bein...

Too often “diversity” becomes a cheap form of coalition building by essentially silencing difference, as in interreligious efforts that presume all religions are basically the same. An authentic way t...

Individuals from diverse cultural and denominational traditions have vastly differing expectations about the Sunday worship service. For some, it is too formal in its use of hymns, liturgy, and the ch...

Ancient Context What’s the historical context? The Tower of Babel The story of the Tower of Babel comes after many chapters relating the story of Noah, the flood, and the covenant with Noah and...