Tutu continues:
It is religion that enables us in a day-to-day living experience of learning, sharing, and caring. Together we come to an understanding of our dependence upon God, and of our interdependence on each other as God's children. It is the recognition of the God in each of us that gives us the key to our future happiness. For if we are interdependent as the whole network of nature declares us to be, we destroy ourselves when we destroy each other.
Communities of faith press us to be shaped within the grand bounds of the expansive Reign of God. It may not always work well, but it is how we move into the promises of God's Reign. It is always a move that is done in the fellowship of others. For when we come to see ourselves as part of more than we are and that "more" is the character of God's loving Reign, our arms are likely to remain open to receive the stranger and the other - so that the community never stops being created anew. The last piece of this quote will stay with me: "we destroy ourselves when we destroy each other." This calls for a love that is able to face differences and face them in all truthfulness. In that way, we may discover that we do not need to destroy each other...rather we can grow in the presence of our differences - differences that are too often allowed to fester until there is dis-ease in the community...and then warfare and destruction.
Connection: What will become of us if we resist destroying the other? We don't have very many historical models to give us a real solid view of such life. So it can begin among us.
God of All Peace, you call us together within a community of new life that always attempts to introduce us to what is not us. It is there that your Spirit pulls us into the gift of your Reign. Amen.
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