Paul wrote:

For he himself is our peace, who has made us both [Jews and Gentiles] one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two . . . For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father (Ephesians 2:14–15, 18).

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body — Jews or Greeks, slaves or free — and all were made to drink of one Spirit. For the body does not consist of one member but of many (1 Corinthians 12:12–14).

The fact is plain: Christians are one.

Our oneness does not come from our efforts. It is a spiritual reality, one that is enacted when we become members of Christ upon trusting in Him for salvation. Our oneness is in a Person, and it is a miracle.

It’s probably too much to ask that whole denominations and congregations will suddenly get serious about the biblical call to unity — acknowledging each other as brothers and sisters and committing to walk together in love, despite our differences, for Christ’s sake. But that’s OK, because like most things, unity starts with individual hearts.

Hearts like mine.

Practical unity, a real relationship with other Christians even if they are outside of “our” circle, starts with what I believe about you and what I do with that belief — it starts with what you believe about me and how you live that out.

Some might cry foul at this point: “We can’t,” they would say, “throw out truth and conviction in the name of love and solidarity.” And they would be right. Doctrine is important. So is practicing righteousness. But our unity is not based on these things. Statements of faith are not the Spirit of God who makes us one. No one denomination has cornered the market on truth. Our standards are not always God’s. And personality conflicts are no excuse to disown your own family.

If you are trusting in Jesus Christ alone for your salvation, no matter where else our beliefs may diverge, we are family. We are “one new man,” we are “baptized into one body”; we all “drink of one Spirit.” And God asks us to live as though this is true.

Read the rest of the article here.

I live in a city famous for air pollution, across the river from a horrendously run-down section of Detroit. My neighborhood is decorated by abandoned shopping carts and graffiti. Two years ago the city workers went on strike for nearly the entire summer, and as weeds grew waist-high in our public parks and walking trails, the air was filled with the buzz of flies and wafting smells from temporary garbage dumps.

Yet, several times a year, into our man-made world of steel and smog come flocks of wild geese in their migrations. They fly overhead in perfect Vs and gather by the Detroit River, flocks of black-cheeked Canada geese with the occasional white interloper in their midst.

Their arrival makes me aware of a greater world outside of my own, a world of mystery and beauty where God feeds and directs all His creatures for His glory and pleasure. This is the world of sunsets and thunderstorms, of lightning and snow, of the deer that graze boldly along the highway through our city, and the insects that buzz in the summer trees.

Genesis 1 speaks of a week of creation, seven days in which man took up only the last: six days before that of earth and sky, water and stars, birds and beasts and beauty. It’s a world held together by incredibly precise and complex forces, a world scientific and mathematical, yet a world breathtakingly artistic. “What do I make of all this texture?” Annie Dillard wrote in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek:

“What does it mean about the kind of world in which I have been set down? The texture of the world, its filigree and scrollwork, means that there is the possibility for beauty here, a beauty inexhaustible in its complexity, which opens to my knock, which answers in me a call I do not remember calling, and which trains me to the wild and extravagant nature of the spirit I seek.”Wild geese in the city are a reminder to leave my little world behind, to abandon for a while my careful mental and social and emotional constructs, and to plunge into the wider world God created and said was good — to go and look at it, listen to it, breathe its air, feel its imagination, and worship God in it.

Read the whole article on Boundless, here.

With my inner world crashing around me, I did all I could to recover the walk I’d had with God. I searched my heart for sin and repented. (I made some pretty forced confessions.) I fasted. I prayed. I got other people to pray for me. I did all the right things, all the things that are supposed to transform you into a God-loving, on-fire, dwelling-in-the-presence believer.

And none of them worked.

One thing remained, but it scared me. I thought it was a cop out. That thing was trust.

Could I just give up my striving and trust God to still love me? Could I keep coming to Him in prayer and just assume He was accepting and hearing me because of His Son? Could I trust Him to still lead me and to have a reason for this strange separation, this apartness which I was so sure could not be His will?

Of all the articles I’ve written recently, this one is closest to my heart. We see dry seasons and struggles as signs that God has abandoned us or we have abandoned Him–but the truth may be something quite different. You can read the whole article here:  http://www.boundless.org/2005/articles/a0002419.cfm

Every year at the end of the Passover Seder, when Jewish people around the world remember the deliverance from Egypt and the thousands of years of captivity, exile, return and exile again that have since ensued, they close the ceremony with the words, “Next year in Jerusalem.” For many years those words were a poignant expression of longing by an exiled, often persecuted people.

Exile is an acute form of suffering, though not one we often talk about; it is estrangement, unsettledness, a knowledge that what you have is not your own. An exile cannot go home and yet can never entirely settle away from home. And though most of us have not been forced out of our homes, there’s an exiled spirit inside every human being. Our first separation from God came when Adam and Eve were exiled from Eden; in some ways, I think we’ve been trying to go home ever since.

Christians are in a unique position. We feel the pain of exile, too: exile from a perfect world, from a life where mortality hung over no one’s head, where strife and illness and sin did not exist. But we alone have a hope of going home someday. In the meantime, we live here, doubly estranged because earthly society will not accept us either — ironically, because of our hope — and trying to live as best we can in a world where we don’t belong.

My most recent Boundless article, which I have neglected to post here far too long … you can read the whole thing here.

On another note, I am thinking about retooling this blog. Again. Turning it into something more personal and perhaps artsy, something that might even include snippets of fiction sometimes.

We shall see.

Life can be worrisome to an 11-year-old. It was to me one night as I lay in the top bunk staring up at the corner of the white ceiling. Outside lights came faintly through the blinds, striping the walls. I was thinking of people who weren’t speaking to each other and of how families could be splintered by distance and misunderstanding, and my child heart hurt over it.

But, I thought, they will all be in heaven. And they will have eternity to patch things up and live in peace. Separation in this life isn’t so bad. They’ll have eternity — forever.

I traced the length of the ceiling with my eyes, corner to corner, and imagined that length stretching as far as another ceiling and another and another and another and another. And somehow, in the stripy darkness of that bedroom, I touched eternity. I dove under the covers with my heart pounding, wrapped myself away from the frightening vastness I’d only just glimpsed.

My heart pounded for a long time.

Do we really believe what we say we believe? Read the whole article at http://www.boundless.org/2005/articles/a0002387.cfm.

“What does this verse mean to you?”

The question is asked intensely by many a Bible study leader, and it kicks off many a highly personal discussion about Scripture. It’s a good question to ask, forcing us to go beyond objective truth and wrestle with application and personal response to God. But it’s the wrong question with which to start.

As a teen, I read the Bible devotionally with a focus on hearing what it had to say “to me.” Passage in Isaiah given to Israel about their captivity in Babylon? A personal message to me about the hard time I was having in a certain relationship. Parable about the Pharisees in Jesus’ day? A personal message to me about hypocrisy. Theological passage on the atonement of Christ’s blood? A personal message to me about … well, you get the idea. I read the Bible as a letter from God to me. The parts that didn’t make sense as a letter from God to me mostly got ignored or allegorized.

Without an objective handle on scriptural truth, we’re going to have a hard time ever understanding or applying it correctly. Paul knew we had to approach truth from both angles: He wrote, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16–17, ESV).

In my early 20s, I was forced to confront my own ignorance and lack of depth in doctrines and stories I’d been reading my whole life – ignorance which made a serious difference to my daily life. I started studying my Bible in a very different way, looking for objective truth first and determined to learn what the Bible really says about, well, everything. It’s become an enriching, fascinating and often frustrating journey – one that’s well worth every minute, every step and every wrong turn that eventually has to be righted.

Read the whole thing here: http://www.boundless.org/2005/articles/a0002398.cfm

P.S. This post notwithstanding, I am moving to a regular once-a-week posting schedule–there should be a new post every Tuesday. Sorry for the scarcity, but I think it’s better than the scatter-shot posting I’m managing right now!

According to Internet World Stats, there are 1,802,330,457 people online. I’m no math whiz, but that’s close to a sixth of the world’s population. It’s more people than live in North America and Europe put together. And the continent with the most Internet users? Asia. The Internet is a virtual meeting place for people from every continent, speaking many different languages, interacting in a million different ways and congregating in a few key places. Among them: Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, YouTube and the Blogosphere.

The conference was not a Christian one, so it’s likely the presenters didn’t intend to impact my personal missionlogy. But they did. I had a significant “aha moment” while I sat in those uncomfortable hotel chairs clicking my bright green Writer’s Digest pen and wishing I could sneak a refill on tea.

For the first time, I recognized the Internet as a legitimate — and exciting — mission field.

Read the whole thing here.

In these dark days, we desperately need Christian artists who will love God with all their hearts, minds, souls, and strength, and who will pour that love into unique creative expressions of truth that have the power to bridge into the souls of others.

This is my charge to them, to you, to myself more than anyone.

Go and meet with God. Seek Him in your relationships, your circumstances, the creation around you. Immerse yourself in scripture. Pray with your whole heart. Let His Spirit fill you with light. And then do what God has asked you to do — be a candle, a burning light, a city on a hill blazing with truth and shelter for those who are lost in the darkness. Use your art to do it.

It is such a dark, dark world. Is there light in you? Then hear my call to you, and to all in whom truth is burning.

Oh Christian, please paint the light!

Read the whole article here.

I have a confession to make: I am a Friendship Focus failure.

Friendship Focus is a time in my church’s Sunday morning services when we extend the traditional “good morning” and a handshake to 15 full minutes of getting tea or coffee, saying hello to the people around us, and, ideally, introducing ourselves to new people and getting to know them.

I am great at the getting tea or coffee part. The chatting it up with the entire congregation, not so much. Sometimes I try. Sometimes I just take a really long time at the tea table so it will all be over and I can go sit down.

The above confession might lead you to believe that I’m shy. I’m not. I enjoy people and getting to know them. I have no problem with sharing my thoughts and opinions, even controversial ones, and in Bible studies I spend a lot of time biting my tongue so other people will have a chance to answer questions. I perform poetry and narrative with Soli Deo Gloria Ballet several times a year, as well as acting as our spokesperson, and I don’t even get butterflies in my stomach when it comes to standing in front of a room full of people and speaking. And ever since I was a kid, I’ve been the one who went to great lengths to make sure new people were greeted and made comfortable.

I’m not shy. What I am is introverted. And sometimes in church, that can be a problem.

Read the rest of the article here: http://www.boundless.org/2005/articles/a0002329.cfm

I saw something in Vancouver that I don’t often see in this northern nation of ours. Patriotism. People bursting with pride in being Canadian, faces painted red and white, waving hockey sticks with Canadian flags on the end. After I’d returned home, I was driving down the freeway and listening to commentators on the CBC (the Canadian Broadcasting Company) asking whether this event, this upswell of Canadian identity and pride, had changed us forever.

Maybe it had, they thought.

Certainly the Olympics helped bolster my own sense of identity as a Canadian. My patriotic journey has been an unusual one. My grandmother was born and raised in Iowa, and though she moved after her marriage to the border city in Canada where my grandfather lived, she remained passionately American all her life. Her eight children were all born in Canada, but obtained dual citizenship early on, and they too developed a strong sense of American identity.

(Read the rest of “Loving My Country” here: http://www.boundless.org/2005/articles/a0002322.cfm .)

After the article posted, I got this lovely e-mail from fellow Boundless writer Elisabeth Adams:

Hi Rachel,

Just wanted to let you know that I enjoyed your latest article on Boundless — both because it’s an excellent articulation of the subject, and because I lived in Canada for a year, and prayed for her alongside my Canadian friends. I still feel a tug on my heart when I hear “we stand on guard for thee.”  I did grow up with a Canadian uncle and later went to school with a Canadian, who hated the igloo jokes and clued me in to the fact that it can be Very Annoying to have such a large and loud neighbor nation soaking up so much of the attention.

But oh, was I an innocent when I went up there! I figured Canada was just like America, only further north. Not so much. :O) I saw Loyalist cemeteries. (That was a shock!) Heard a much less pugnacious attitude towards politics. Felt the gentle, Old World spirit and experienced over-the-top hospitality. Celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving. Drank tea! Enjoyed seeing British spellings. Got used to seeing French everywhere.  Enjoyed a bit of my Scottish heritage, including kilts, Gaelic, and fiddles.  Lived so far from town that the stars were brighter than I’ve ever seen them before or since, and by woods so thick, it was easy to imagine Indians stepping out of them. Saw my first bald eagles in the wild (ironic, that). Bought milk in bags, and actually had both milkman and bookmobile come my house. Got lost in Quebec, and watched my non-French-speaking dad try to get directions from a very non-English-speaking hunter. (Lots of arm waving involved).

When I’m abroad, people of numerous nationalities hear my accent and guess that I’m Canadian. And it makes me smile. I love being American, but I’m glad I’ve gotten to know our sister nation just a wee bit more.

Thanks for reminding me of so many good memories!
Elisabeth

Here’s to both our countries today!