A Prayer For Harmony

 

 

Eternal God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, creator of the heavens and the earth, all You have made speaks of Your desire for harmony and unity, without conformity and similarity.  The blue of the sky and the green of the earth only You can blend together.  The  rotation of the earth, the orbit of the sun,  the placing of the stars all point to the meticulous and harmonious way in which all things fit together.  And when I think of the  symmetry of the world which You created, I shiver at the thought of how most everything today seems so out of sync.  Our political parties divide us, our governing bodies confuse us, our generation gaps hurt us, and the tension between races and cultures plague us.   It often seems that only wars can unite us, but of late even war divides us.  We are a fractured people.  And no place is it more noticeable than within the Christian Community.  The oneness for which Christ prayed has to be applied to the church triumphant for it cannot be found in the church militant.  We ask You this morning, how is it possible for even believers to live in harmony with one another.  Surely, You do not want us to sacrifice our belief in Your Word.  You do not want us to preach another Gospel, but that which was given to us by Jesus Christ.  What then can we do?

 

Even as we ask the question we hear You whisper, “Look at the early church."  It was made up of Gentile and Jew, Athenians and Romans, Africans and Cretans, aristocrats and peasants and yet again and again in its history it was recorded that “they were of one accord.”   And what was it on which they had agreement?   It was that Jesus, who rose from the grave, was the very Son of God, who came to earth to reconcile all who believe in Him to the Father.  That which brought harmony to that diverse body of believers was their oneness in believing who Jesus Christ was and that salvation came, not through any effort of ours, but by grace are we saved, through faith, and that not of ourselves, it is Your gift to us.

 

Father, forgive us when we expect others to think like we think, to act like we act, to talk like we talk.  Forgive us when we make harmony and even diversity the goal of the church.  Rather let us see them as the result of an unwavering commitment to the Christ of the Gospels.  Grant that the church might experience the harmony and unity which comes from centering our attention on Your Son, our Savior Jesus Christ.

 

This is our prayer.     Amen