It’s one of my favorite verses: John 17:21. If anything is ever written on my tombstone, let it be this: ‘That all may be one.’ I want everyone to be saved by Jesus. We are all created equal. May we all be one in the family of God.
My love for this verse started back when I worked at the YMCA. That was their tag line. It’s why I tried so hard to pull kids of different backgrounds together in my programs to teach character and leadership. That was a challenge, but it worked beautifully. You see, kids all want to be one. Everybody wants to belong to something greater than themselves. You just need to find some common ground.
Now, 10 years later, I’m working at a Catholic church. It’s a different group of people this time, but the concept is the same, only ‘Jesus’ is the something greater. It began with serving a parish of over 500 families and now the task is to bring 7 Catholic parishes together as a family. And that is a challenge, because every church has its own identity and they’re afraid they may get lost in coming together. This ‘merging’ of churches is happening in all the churches of our archdiocese and in churches around the US because of a lack priests and a diminishing number of church participants.
Can we all become one? Can we let go of old patterns and ways of doing things to allow others into our group? Change is hard and it’s going to take time, but it has to happen. We can’t continue to lose members in our churches. Our world and the people in it desperately need Jesus. What will happen if we lose our places of worship?
It is true that Jesus came that we all might be one, but we are not all exactly the same. He gives us each different gifts and talents so that we might share them with each other.
The archdiocese has given us 5 years to get all this together. There is so much work ahead but it’s good work, worthy work and I feel blessed to be part of a great team who will get it done.
In the next 10 years, who knows what God has up his sleeve? Maybe we can work on bringing Protestants and Catholics together. Now there is a challenge! We are all going to be one, some day. That’s Jesus’ desire. He will bring it about.
This website is all about Character & Virtue. It’s about developing character traits so we can all live together in this world. The blog posts help you in one way or another to read, think and put them into practice in your life. Character is developed through discipline. It leads us to a life of happiness and fullness. Check out the post on Discipline.
Thanks for following along. I appreciate you. May we all be as one. God bless.–Barb
