Thursday, 11 March, 2004

We will continue to base the devotions on “God for a Secular Culture” by Jurgen Moltmann.



This week we will be looking at how knowledge of the ‘other’ leads to community in diversity.

Here too (with the other) the concern that guides perception…is union. But the goal is not a unity in uniformity; it is a unity in diversity. Those who are different can complement each other, and long for reciprocal complementation as the earth longs for the rain, and rain for the earth… Antagonisms do not always have to be deadly. They can be life-giving as well, and can promote life… Yin and Yang, which rhythmically and fluidly divide and unite, divide so as to unite, unite so as to divide, and thus advance the process of life.



What kind of union are we looking for? There can be no better example of diversity taking part in a union as when we see a man and a woman enter into a covenant relationship in marriage. Talk about opposites…differences. From physical appearance and physical design to claims that one is from Mars and the other from Venus, marriage is an adventure in antagonisms. One of the great challenges in many marriages is that the relationship will develop into a union and not merely an episode of uniformity in which one person rules or dictates the life of the two. Vitality in a marriage comes from the notion of the union of two strangers seeking to make a go at a life journey together…side by side. It is risky but it is also filled with great potential for life for both sides.



Connection: It would do us all a bit of good to make a mental note of someone within spectrum of our friends and co-workers who is quite different from us and then ask what it is that we receive from that person that makes our life something other than it would be without them. Then, ask…how does it make my life better.



Manifest in the diversity of your creation, O God, is a creativity that continues without end through the relationships we enter each day. Thanks for the differences among us that ask us to march on within your creative realm of life. Amen.