“Celebrate what makes us great, our Diversity!”

Lighthearted – July 2021

Let’s face it. Most of us were born into our faith tradition. We are Christians largely because our parents were Christians. The same can be said for Islam, Judaism, and all the world religions.

We were also all born with the genetic and racial inheritance of our parents. We often refer to this as an “accident of birth”, but what if these “differences” are not an accident? Perhaps God has given us this amazing panoply of humanity for us to understand, learn from, and enjoy?

We are all united in all the ways that matter, and we are all children of the same loving father. We are all capable of love, kindness, generosity, and joy. Equally, we are all capable of duplicity, anger, hatred, greed, and malevolence. But most importantly, we are all children of a loving God, and are called by him to our best selves and our highest purpose. Imagine what this world would be if we could see each other the way our loving Father sees us. Our human distinctions of race, color, creed, status, ability, and appearance are all superficial and meaningless in terms of our shared humanity. What if, every time we looked at a stranger, we saw our mother or father or sister or brother? Would we reach out to them? Would we love?

We are all souls dwelling in different “houses”. Make no mistake, these houses are temporary dwellings. It is imperative that we discard the painful divisions, prejudices, and false pride that we have all inherited.

We are here to work out our salvation – to return “home.” Perhaps we are meant to work it out together, to extend a helping hand, to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless. In short, to truly believe that we are all in this together, and to embrace our universal family of God.