Living in the Spirit
August 13, 2014
Scripture Reading: Psalm 133
How very good and pleasant it is
when kindred live together in unity! — Psalm 133:1
My mother died on January 13 in the midst of a frigid blizzard. It was fitting, I suppose, for my father, nearly 30 years earlier, had died on January 15 in a frigid blizzard. Their deaths had nothing to do with the weather but the weather had everything to do with planning memorials and settling the business of death. It thus was a few weeks later when there was no longer ice on the road that I traveled the seventy miles to my mother’s hometown to meet with my brother and sister to close out my mother’s bank account. My sister was at work but she would meet my brother and me at the bank. While discussing these plans on the phone, she said that she would pick up the death certificate we needed at the funeral home on her way to the bank. I volunteered to do that since I was taking the whole day off from work. When I arrived at the funeral home and made my request for the death certificate, the staff person, while very cordial, seemed very nervous. She went to the back and consulted apparently with her boss. She then returned to her desk and called my sister to get permission to give me the death certificate. After a short conversation with my sister, the woman handed me the death certificate. Knowing that I had overheard her conversation, I guess she felt the need to apologize. She said, “You have no idea how many family feuds have erupted right here at this desk over a death certificate.” The home had long practiced a policy of establishing the name of the one person who was to get the death certificate at the first visit by the family.
Families are our first opportunities to interact with other human being. They are complex structures that form the basis of all societies. Families built on the rule of love work hard at wanting the very best for each individual member while fostering the very best for the family as a whole. Weaving together diversities and similarities of personalities is a constant challenge among people at differing stages of growth and development.
The family of God must also be built on the foundation of the rule of love. We are called to be one in Christ that doesn’t mean we have to be the same. It probably means we should not because loving like God surely means loving in diverse ways. It takes all of us to even begin to love like God.
Prayer: Father and Mother of All, mold us into one by helping us to see the beauty in each of our individualities. Amen.
All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of American. Used by permission. All rights reserved.