I'm moving to France!
For a semester. I'm very excited. I'll be living in an apartment in the center of Aix-en-Provence, taking classes at the Institut Americain Universitaire, and adventuring around Europe on the weekends! I'm also hoping to work with a missionary in Marseille (the big city near Aix) who works with refugees. It's a lovely Monday night, I'm sitting at my corner table at my favorite Birmingham coffee shop, Church Street Coffee and Books. Rather than studying or being "productive" (why do we value productivity so much anyway? more on that later), I pick up a book: The Atlas of Beauty: Women of the World in 500 Portraits. I spend a little over an hour perusing Mihaela Noroc's photos of women of all ages, races, and languages, gazing into their deep brown, green, blue eyes, wondering their stories. I'm struck by their differences, but even more what they - what we - all might have in common. And it brought me to a thought:
Unity is not uniformity. We, the body of Christ, are united under the godhead one as brothers and sisters. We are family. We are united by a common denominator, a most important one, that makes royalty out of the unseen, a beloved child out of the orphan, and living soul out of the grave. We are one, but we are vastly diverse. We are family, but we don't look alike. Unity does not manifest itself as uniformity in this kingdom; no, it rather manifests itself through love, through compassion, through understanding, through mercy. My citizenship crosses political borders. It even goes beyond the confines of the earthly stratosphere. The cross bridges all racial, linguistic, socioeconomic, geographic, ethnic, and cultural frontiers. Unity is not uniformity. "Be still and know that I am God."
I bet you have that verse on a coffee mug. Or on a piece of flowery wall art. Or maybe on a sticker on the back of your Bible - I know I do. But have you ever read through the context of this verse? Let's take a look. No la ves? La puesta del sol. Viene y se va, el sol con todos sus colores, entre los nubes y las montañas. Viene y se va, el sol. Mi querida, mi querido pueblo: yo vengo y yo me quedo. No me ves? El sol.
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AuthorI'm Danielle, a lover of Jesus, seeker of adventure, and twenty-something living with Dysautonomia. Archives
December 2018
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