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Unity and Diversity in the Church

As some of you know we are involved in a six week emphasis on what it means to be a church member.  One of the things we have learned is that church membership is like being a part of the human body.  Paul described this well in I Corinthians 12.  He reminded us that the function of the church and the human body have lots in common, in particular that the parts must all function together for the body to be healthy.

Certainly we are aware that the parts of the body are diverse.  Hands, eyes, lungs, stomach, heart and feet are not interchangeable.  God designed the church to function with diverse parts also.  As church members, we are gifted by God to function in different ways bringing our backgrounds, experiences and talents together to make the body whole.  A church isn’t just any collection of body parts any more than a human body.  After all, a body isn’t made up of a whole bunch of tongues, or feet, or hands, or eyes or ears but instead it’s made up of a combination of each of the parts of the body, one this, a couple of these and some of those.  God designs parts of a body which can function together to do His will for that church.  Diversity isn’t an accidental part of the nature of the church any more than the human body.

As members of the body of Christ, we can be compared to pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. Each piece has protrusions and indentations. The protrusions represent our strengths (gifts, talents, abilities), and the indentations represent our weaknesses (limitations, shortcomings, undeveloped areas). But the neat thing is that the pieces complement one another and produce a beautiful whole. Just as each piece of a puzzle is important, so each member of the body of Christ is important. Just as, when one piece is missing from the puzzle, its absence is very obvious and damages the picture, so also is the whole weakened when we are absent from the body of Christ.

God never intended or equipped any one of us to do everything.   But we should also note that God desires every one of us to do something in His church.  If you have read this and have not found your place in the Eastern Hills fellowship or would like to talk about how you can become a vital part of what God is doing in our church, please touch base with me or one of our ministry team.  We would love to take a moment and talk through this.  There is more to do and more ways to serve than you probably ever imagined.

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FOCUSED

One of the casualties of aging to which I find myself a victim is the dimming of the eyes.  Ecclesiastes 12 counsels the young person to remember God, their Creator, in their youth before the aging process takes over and various faculties, as listed in verses 1-7, are diminished.

Clear eyesight when we are young may be something we take for granted. However, as we age the realization that our vision is not as sharp as it once was takes hold. “Readers” become standard fare for all intricate tasks. Our once keen laser sharp focus is now blurry and in need of help to restore its youthfulness. That restoration is found through glasses or some sort of rejuvenating surgery. Especially in the early stages of this degenerative eye problem we may be able to fake it and get by, but eventually we must relent and do something to correct the problem.

There is a parallel between physical and spiritual vision. “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus” was written in the early 20th century. The hymn writer, Helen Lemmel, was strongly influenced by the artist and later little-known missionary, Lilias Trotter. Miss Trotter started off as an aspiring artist but early on felt a call from God to reach the lost. She began her ministry by rescuing prostitutes from the streets of London. Later she went to Africa, without missionary funding, and served for over forty years. While there she penned a poem that would greatly influence the writing of the hymn “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus.”  The poem was entitled “Focused: A Story and Song.” 

The poem centers around focusing one’s attentions fully and completely upon God. She writes that Satan knows that if a person uses all their powers of concentration on being led by God’s Spirit, they will have a great intensity and impact upon those to whom they are called to minister. Lilias Trotter, writing in a more formal use of the English language than we are accustomed, shares some timeless insights which could very easily have been written today but with a different accent. She writes: “Never has it been so easy to live in half a dozen good harmless worlds at once—art, music, social science, games, motoring, the following of some profession, and so on. And between them we run the risk of drifting about, the ‘good’ hiding the ‘best’ even more effectually than it could be hidden downright frivolity with its smothered heartache at its own emptiness.”

The “good” hiding the “best” leads us to emptiness.  Could this be true of us today especially as American Christians? Have we sought the “good” while missing the “best”? The chorus of the hymn, which we will be singing in worship this Sunday, says it best.

                Turn your eyes upon Jesus, Look full in His wonderful face,                                                                                                                                        And the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.

Keith Pate

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