Community – Unity & Diversity in the Body

By Brooke Momblow

1 Corinthians 12 NIV v.6 There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work. V.7 Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. V.18 But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. v.19 If they were all one part, where would the body be? v.24 But God has put the body together,  giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it v.25  so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. v.26 If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

Want to go deeper? Read 2 Corinthians 13:11, Philippians 2:1-5.

We are Christ’s body, each of us a different member unique to God’s purpose for the whole.  Sometimes we can lose sight of this and only see ourselves and the parts we play or don’t play.  ‘The Hands’ might look at ‘The Feet’ and think, “Gee, those Feet sure are shaped funny and their viewpoint from way down there is so distorted from what it is up here. In fact, I really can’t relate to them at all.”  So the Hands hang out with other hands. And the Feet group up only with other feet.  The Eyes and Ears might find themselves in the shadows, isolated and alone.  None of them realizing Christ’s Hands can’t serve without the Feet to take them there, the Feet are unable to do the work of the Hands, and neither one knows where to go or what to do because they can’t hear the words of the Father or see what it is He is doing. C.S. Lewis said: "We like to think we’ve chosen our peers, but as Christians there are no chances. Christ has placed us and reveals to us the beauty of others."

Questions to Ponder  

-How do we live in unity together and work together, when God has made us so diverse from each other?

-What if relationships weren’t designed to make us happy? What if relationships were designed to make us Holy?  

Prayer

Heavenly Father,

Lack of interest or concern is what amputates members, distance and indifference dismember the body, and we are all desperate to stop feeling abandoned and cut off. Help us to be the Re-membering people. You have charged us to do life together, teach us how. Show us what it looks like in the details of our lives. We are the fellowship of the broken Christ. The miracle happens in the breaking… Help us to trust our brokenness to others who are also broken, that we would be broken together with You Lord. Enable us to share in the intimate communion that comes from allowing the body to share in our suffering and our joy. We want to live given to each other the way you lived given for us and that means nothing less than radical humility and expansive trust. Continue the work you’ve begun in us. Together in Jesus we ask this, Amen. 

(prayer adapted from Ann Voskamp, The Broken Way)